To be the best with Shakhtar

- I’m very happy to be at Shakhtar! I want to thank God that I managed to join this great team. The goal is to improve my qualities and be the best together with the team.

- At Shakhtar, you took the same shirt number that you had at Ajax - No. 23. What does this number mean to you?

- At first I wanted to have number 2, just like in the national team, or 22. But when I moved to Ajax, they offered me number 23 - this number also belonged to the great basketball player Michael Jordan. So I decided not to change anything at Shakhtar either.

- You must have been told that appearance wise and in terms of your playing manner you look like the striker of the Belgium national team Romelu Lukaku. Would you like to reach his fame and level?

- Romelu Lukaku inspires me a lot and, of course, I try to be like him. However, I need to develop physically and improve my playing qualities to be like him.

- And you also look like another great striker - Didier Drogba. If you take all the central strikers in the world, who do you associate yourself with the most?

- Actually, Didier Drogba was my idol, as was Samuel Eto'o. Of the current players, the top forwards for me are Robert Lewandowski and Karim Benzema. I’m really impressed with their play.

- The surname Traore is common in football. Is it related to geography? I wonder who of the famous namesakes do you want to be like?

- Indeed, in West Africa - Burkina Faso, Mali - many people have the surname Traore. My mother is from Mali, she also bears the last name Traore. It's just a popular surname that doesn't mean anything. And I'm guided by my cousin Bertrand Traore who plays in the EPL for Aston Villa, he’s also a forward.

- What did you know about Ukraine before joining Shakhtar? Perhaps you can name the teams, apart from Dynamo, who can impose their game upon the Miners in the league?

- I watched Shakhtar's matches and am familiar with the opponents' play, I watched Dynamo's games. I know that there’s Dnipro, as I watched the games of this team when Yevhen Konoplyanka played there.

- In the Dutch league game Venlo 0-13 Ajax, you scored 8 goals at once. What do you need to make this kind of scoring performance repeat more often in your career?

- It was my first appearance for the first team of Ajax that season, I really wanted to prove myself. To achieve the same result with Shakhtar, I need to work hard, train every day. Only through work can I achieve the same results and even surpass them.

- You virtually did not appear in the last matches of Ajax last season. The Dutch media reported that this was due to your conflict with the coach Erik ten Hag. Is it true?

- No, there was no conflict. Moreover, just three days ago I spoke with him. He played on the same team with my uncle, and we knew each other even earlier, before my career at Ajax. Erik ten Hag is a very good person.

- How many goals do you want to score in your first season with Shakhtar and what do you know about the major rivals Dynamo?

- Indeed, I really want to score goals, but at the same time it’s much more important for Shakhtar to win, for our team to win titles in every competition I take part in. Dynamo? I saw their matches in the Champions League against Barcelona. That’s a cool team that impressed me.

- Your mom is a professional footballer. What is the main lesson you learned about football from her upbringing?