Shevchenko goes into politics.

Andriy Shevchenko, first among goal scorers in his part of the world, is leaving soccer to become a politician.

He gave Ukraine a victory over Sweden with two sharp, superbly angled headers in Kiev during the Euro 2012 tournament last month. But those goals — taking him to 48 in 111 national team appearances — were the last of a career that made him one of the best, and richest, strikers of his time.

The mind, as we saw in Kiev, was still sharp. But the body was telling him to go before he deteriorated further still. His back was aching, his thigh was strained. And after he suffered a kick to his knee, not even Shevchenko could lift Ukraine to another victory.

So what does a revered former player, one enriched by his moves to Milan and to Chelsea and then back to his first club, Kiev, do with the rest of his life? “Probably I will shock all of you,” Shevchenko announced via the Dynamo Kiev club Web site. “My future will not be linked to football in any way. It will be linked to politics, I hope for your support.”

He may get it, if the voters in Ukraine can separate one Andriy Shevchenko from another.

In soccer, Shevchenko was absolutely singular — a tall, lithe, ruthless finisher of chances and half-chances from the left wing or center forward.

In politics, he has a namesake, an already established deputy in the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian Parliament. The other Andriy Shevchenko is 36, the age that the former soccer player will turn in September. The older Andriy has taken a more conventional route to his seat in Parliament: He is a journalist who studied political science and economics at Kiev Mohyla Academy, then won fellowships to Yale and Stanford universities in the United States.

While the soccer star was still on A.C. Milan’s payroll, the other Shevchenko was actively involved in the 2005 Orange Revolution in Ukraine.

That is not to say that the player was unaware of the populist powers of being involved in “the People’s Game.” His boss at Milan, a godfather to Shevchenko’s first son, happened to be Italy’s prime minister at the time, Silvio Berlusconi.

And when Berlusconi sold Shevchenko for £30 million, then around $43 million, it was already clear to see that Ukraine’s finest sharpshooter was troubled by the injuries that came with the kicks around his legs.

Italian defenders had knocked Marco van Basten, Sheva’s predecessor in Milan’s red and black colors, out of the sport through accumulated injuries to his ankle. Berlusconi, then and now willing to sell a striker if he thinks he has already extracted the best out of the player, took the money from Chelsea’s Russian owner, Roman Abramovich.

The decline was apparent to all but the oligarch. Shevchenko could still do the job, as he showed in Kiev a month ago, but in short bursts of exceptional timing and sniper-like sensing of a target.

But this Shevchenko — Andriy Mykolayovych Shevchenko, to use his full name — had long possessed an eye for life’s biggest opportunities.

His family moved, when Andriy was 9, away from the poisoned air that reached their village from the fallout of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The Shevchenkos moved to the coast around the same time that the parents of the then-unborn tennis player Maria Sharapova also relocated from nearby Belarus.

One aftereffect from the disaster might be in the toughening of people, some of whom came back with a will to change society. Or maybe it is just the region — part of the old Soviet bloc — that persuades people to strive for fame and fortune in sports and then public service.

Sergei Bubka, the soaring pole vaulter, served four years in the Ukrainian Parliament before concentrating his efforts in sports and Olympic administration as well as the Champions for Peace movement in Monaco.

The heavyweight boxer Vitali Klitschko founded his own political party, known as Udar, which in Ukrainian means punch. Klitschko is campaigning now for a seat in the October general election.

And that, Shevchenko said, will also be his starting point. “I plan to support the social sector and sport,” the soccer player announced Saturday. “After all, my main slogan is a healthy mind in a healthy body.”

That adaptation of quote by the Roman poet Juvenal — “mens sana in corpora sano” or sound mind in a healthy body — is all around us right now in the Olympics.

If Shevchenko carries it out with the touch that gave him a total of 321 goals in 648 games in a professional career that spanned 18 seasons, he will be some politician.

His mentor in sports was Valeri Lobanovsky, the former coach of Dynamo Kiev, who also led the U.S.S.R. national team at the same time. Lobanovsky had dissident inclinations, but primarily lived for soccer, and among his charges was Oleg Blokhin, a winger-turned-manager who also has served in Parliament. Whippet fast and a dead-eyed finisher, Blokhin returned to take charge of the Ukraine team in time to see Shevchenko eclipse his scoring record. Blokhin had scored 42 times in 112 games for the Soviet Union between 1972 and 1988.

He sounded a bit touchy when asked if Shevchenko would be in the Euro starting lineup. “Only teamwork will bring success,” Blokhin responded. “Names do not play football. If they did, I could be playing now.”

But Shevchenko did play and did score when no one else could for Ukraine, and now has retired, one game shy of the 112 games that Blokhin played for his national team.

He follows him into politics, but again goes his own way. The first to know where this Shevchenko’s leanings lie included pupils at a summer school, where he appeared Saturday together with Nataliya Korolevska.

Korolevska, formerly a supporter of Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime minister whose jailing angered European political leaders, has a new party called Ukraine Forward.

“I decided to join the team of Nataliya Korolevska,” Shevchenko said, “because it is a party of the future, a party of young leaders. I want to fulfill myself in politics and share the experience I gained in Europe and do something for my country.”

A former player, taking fresh aim.