Qualified for its fourth European Championship after coming back in the play-off against Iceland in the Polish exile of Wrocław, Ukraine represents in Germany a country at war that has the sentimental support of almost everyone and for which its players go out of their way with … an extraordinary motivation. Sergiy Rebrov’s team, which opens this Monday against Romania at the Munich headquarters, is eager to be able to make up for its technical limitations with the strength of the mind, although it has interesting players such as Mudryk, Zinchenko and Dovbyk, Pichichi with Girona.
Sport in general and football in particular, whether practiced or followed with patriotic interest, allows Ukrainian war wounded to “feel alive in difficult moments”, as a legend like Andriy Schevchenko, winner of the Ballon d’Or in 2004 and current president of the Ukrainian federation. This son of a military man said it within the framework of the European Championship for amputee ex-combatants held recently in Evian in eastern France.
For more than two years, when the Russian invasion began, Ukrainian footballers have been thinking about the soldiers defending their territory. They do not have weapons, but they defend them symbolically with the ball. “I’m not a hero,” goalkeeper Andriy Lunin relativized after leading Real Madrid to the semifinals of the Champions League after defeating Manchester City on penalties.
«The real difficulty is the war in my country, where my family and friends are. It is not easy to go to training every day receiving the worst possible news,” said the goalkeeper. The most followed Ukrainian athlete on Instagram, with three million followers, does not miss an opportunity to serve as an ambassador for his country. He celebrates the successes with the blue and yellow flag on his back and insists that “the important thing is not to forget what is happening in my country.”
The real heroes
Lunin is just one example of the feeling of the Ukrainian team. There are many more like him. “I am grateful to our soldiers for allowing me to continue playing football, progress and sleep peacefully,” says Shakhtar Donetsk midfielder Sudakov. Since the first combats took place ten years ago in the Donbas region, the club in the orange shirt has been living in exile and the 21-year-old footballer misses his country. “I dream of returning to my native Brianka, of going back and playing a match at the Dombas Arena, which was bombed in 2014. I have never been, I have only heard about it and seen it on TV,” he explains.
When Mudryk was transferred from Shakhtar to Chelsea, the Donbass club received 100 million euros, of which they donated a quarter to the soldiers and their families. «The answer is clear. “I would go,” the ‘gunner’ Zinchenko stated, unequivocally, when the BBC asked him if he would be willing to join the Ukrainian army if he were called up. “It is difficult to understand that recently we were at the same school, we played at recess or on the soccer field and now we must defend our country,” the former City player, who donated more than one million euros, added about the Ukrainian soldiers. to your country.
Another local idol, striker Roman Yaremchuk, was brave. On the eve of the Russian invasion he dared to show the trident, symbol of Ukraine, to celebrate a goal with Benfica against Ajax in the Champions League. Yaremchuk took off his red shirt to reveal a black shirt with the ‘tamga’, a stylized representation of a falcon that lunges at its prey.
More than a million Ukrainians took refuge in Germany when the war began, in February 2022. The Ukrainian federation has hung at the entrance to the stadium in Wiesbaden, western Germany, images of each player with a soldier in the background, accompanied with messages like: “We strive to be infallible like you.”
“When the soldiers find out about their victories, it will give them more strength,” Nikita Mishchenko, one of those fans who brought wreaths of flowers in the colors of the Ukrainian flag to the headquarters of the Rebrov team, told the AFP agency. The exiles are convinced that “the Euro Cup will give moral strength to all those who are in the trenches.”
