Illya Karavashchenko

Illya Vyacheslavovych Karavashchenko (Ілля Вячеславович Караващенко; born 25 June 2001) is a Ukrainian professional footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for Ukrainian club FSC Mariupol.

Karavashchenko began playing football in Zorya Luhansk academy. After a short pause, in 2014 he moved to Kyiv to his relatives where he was training in nearby suburbs with KODYuSSh Shchaslyve. In 2015 Karavashchenko finally made it to the academy of the main eastern Ukraine football club Shakhtar Donetsk which just relocated to Shchaslyve and with which he stayed almost until 2020. In 2018 he was on the Shakhtar's roster for 2018–19 UEFA Youth Champions League as a reserve goalkeeper spending all his time on the bench.

In February 2020 he was transferred out to the UPL team of Desna Chernihiv, but was listed as a third goalie and did not get much of playtime partially due to injury. After a season he was loaned to the second tier VPK-Ahro Shevchenkivka playing in central Ukrainian city of Dnipro. In VPK-Ahro Karavashchenko was struggling to make to a senior squad as well. On 5 October 2021 VPK-Ahro released the player back to Desna. Due to the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he transferred to FSC Mariupol which has relocated to Boryspil and was admitted to the second tier (Persha Liha).

In his first year for Mariupol's team Karavashchenko was a reserve goalkeeper mostly spending his time on the bench in 10 out of the 22 season's matches. He finally made his debut at professional level on 26 May 2023 in away match against Hirnyk-Sport Horishni Plavni which Mariupol lost 0:1. The next 2023–24 season became a real breakthrough for Karavashchenko who started out in all 18 matches of the first half for Mariupol and recorded 8 clean sheets. Mariupol, which was struggling in previous year, qualified for the Championship group with only 3 matches lost. Mariupol also improved in national cup competitions eliminating Kolos Kovalivka in penalty shootout on efforts of Karavashchenko and reaching round of 16 for the first time.