Soldiers on the front line are telling us: Get Ukraine to World Cup
Players prepare for qualifier with nation urging them on
SERHIY SYDORCHUK reaches for his phone and goes in search of painful reminders. He doesn’t have to scroll for long. ‘I’ll show you,’ the Ukraine midfielder says, switching briefly to broken English.
The pictures he finds need no translation, either: his pregnant wife sleeping on the floor of a car park, his young children huddled in the boot.
It is less than a year since the 31-year-old was in Rome, battling England in the Euro 2020 quarterfinals. On the morning we meet, he is surrounded by bird song and rolling mountains outside Ljubljana.
The road between is littered with bombs, broken windows, bodies and blankets. Eventually it led him and his Ukraine team-mates here, to Brdo in Slovenia, via Romania, Warsaw, factory floors and underground shelter.
‘One day before the invasion — February 23,’ says Sydorchuk, ‘my wife couldn’t sleep. She had prepared some meat to make soup the next day. I had set an alarm for seven o’clock because I had to drive my daughter to school.’
Within hours, a nearby airport in Kyiv was under attack by Russian forces. ‘The handles of the windows in my apartment were broken. They just dropped off,’ says Sydorchuk. So he and his young family headed below ground to the car park, where for two days they survived alongside team-mates Serhiy Kryvtsov, Andriy Pyatov, and Mykola Matvienko.
Soon Sydorchuk digs out another photo. Taken during his recent visit to a Polish refugee camp, it depicts a young boy and his notebook.
‘He is seven,’ says Sydorchuk. The child had scribbled the Russian flag and burning buildings. ‘He’s already painting war.’ He is not alone. Ukraine’s players and staff sketch harrowing snapshots from along their route here, where they have gathered for the first time since home began to burn.
Only on Wednesday, missiles landed less than a mile from the home of one staff member’s family; goalkeeper Dmytro Riznyk had a son the day before Russia crossed the border. Sydorchuk’s parents are helping refugees fleeing from Mariupol.
‘The best news at the start of the day is just to receive a message from them: “We are OK”,’ he says. Meanwhile, normality beckons.
Ukraine, who have not played since November, face Borussia Monchengladbach in a friendly on Wednesday. Then, somehow, they have to prepare for World Cup play-offs against Scotland, and potentially Wales, next month.
For now, the arresting tales of tragedy and pain and fear cut through the serenity of Slovenia.
Yet, against this beautiful backdrop, they carry images of defiance, even messages of rebirth. Take the shins of midfielder Mykola Shaparenko, whose relatives recently escaped the frontline near Donetsk. On one leg, the word ‘Blessed’ is inked into his skin. On the other: ‘Hope’. Etched nearby is a dove and a small football. The tattoos pre-date this conflict but could hardly feel more fitting now.
Further down his left leg, Shaparenko carries a Latin phrase: ‘Pugnare enim vivere’. Fight to survive. That is all Ukraine and its footballers can do now.
‘We have to protect our honour,’ says Riznyk.
Sydorchuk adds: ‘As our president Volodymyr Zelensky said: “Anybody who is on the frontline, or who helps with anything, he’s fighting for the country”.’
Every day, these players receive messages from Ukrainian solders. ‘They have only one demand,’ said midfielder Taras Stepanenko on Friday. “Please, do everything you can to go to the World Cup.”
‘For the country, for them, it’s a moment of hope… that’s why we have to play not only like a football game, we have to play with our souls, our heart.’
THE first bus, bound for Brdo, rolled out of Kyiv at 8am last Saturday. It carried coach Oleksandr Petrakov, his staff, and young goalkeeper Riznyk, whose son had begun life in hiding near the besieged city of Kharkiv.
‘I spent four days in the maternity ward with my wife and son, then went back to our apartment in Poltava,’ says Riznyk. ‘Every day we went down to the shelter because there were constant sirens.’
Eventually, the 23year-old boarded the coach back to work.
After 10 hours on the road, collecting team-mates in Lviv and Uzhhorod, they slept near the border. Another 10-hour, 500-mile drive through Hungary followed.
‘I’m 64, I’ve seen a lot in my life,’ says Petrakov. ‘But we drove past empty gas stations… and there were big queues. When we crossed the border I saw a peaceful life, the kind I’d maybe forgotten living in Ukraine. So I felt some peace inside.’ And yet? ‘I feel big, big responsibility for what I’m doing. I feel it for all my nation.’
Riznyk was torn, too. ‘It’s important to represent our country… but my heart is there, in Poltava,’ he adds. ‘I’ll only find peace again when I return and there is no war.’
By Thursday, 23 players from Ukrainian clubs had arrived to train at Slovenia’s National Football Centre. Soon, stars based abroad such as Oleksandr Zinchenko (Manchester City) and Andriy Yarmolenko (West Ham) will join them.
Petrakov, who replaced Andriy Shevchenko after the Euros, tries to lift spirits with jokes and tales from football and life.
‘It’s a nightmare,’ says Petrakov. ‘It’s important to distract them, on the other hand, we all know people and soldiers are dying for Ukraine. They have to know it, to keep it in their mind and in their hearts.’
RIZNYK is among some players who have not trained properly since the invasion. Others, including Sydorchuk of Dynamo Kyiv, have played charity matches to help those escaping Ukraine. Hence why he was in Warsaw, visiting that former factory filled with displaced families and what is left of their lives. Sydorchuk still remembers the smell. And that boy.
‘I hope, in future, he will live his life normally and have everything he wants. But I think some scars on his heart will remain.’
Petrakov has to stitch a football team back together, too. He refused to flee Kyiv and tried to join Ukraine’s territorial defence.
‘I’m 64 and nothing in my life has gone smoothly. There have often been problems to resolve and I’m thinking: “Why me?” ’ says Petrakov. ‘But maybe this is my life, so I meet the challenge.’ Riznyk’s team-mates at Vorskla Poltava are back training too. ‘Even among the sirens,’ he says. ‘At other times they are volunteering, at hospitals and helping people in need. If we can’t help, who can?’
Come June 1 at Hampden Park, Ukraine cannot rely on favours. Not that Petrakov wants any. He never thought Ukraine should be handed a place in Qatar. ‘It would be sad if it came for free,’ he says. ‘And the players don’t want it. You have to deserve it.’ Even while straddling such parallel worlds, Ukrainian minds have begun to wander. They yearn for peace. ‘We believe in the people who are defending our country and believe we will win,’ says Riznyk.
They dream of glory. ‘I am at such an age where I don’t want anything,’ adds Petrakov. ‘No house, no car. If I take the team to Qatar, I have lived my life for a reason.’
People are dying. We have to keep it in our minds and in our hearts