Shakhtar Donetsk Deported by Russian Bombs Embraces Journey


Although he had heard them, it was not the sound of the bombs that brought back memories of Darijo Srna. It was air raid sirens.

Srna froze in horror when they exploded in Kiev shortly after 6 am on February 24. His mind was flooded with thoughts and memories of his childhood, his first experience of war when the former Yugoslavia fell apart in the 1990s.

Since then, football has led the 39-year-old Srna to a distinguished career away from his home in Croatia, much of it at Ukrainian club Shakhtar Donetsk, where he is currently the director of football, and in the Champions League and two World Cups. But suddenly the sirens brought everything back.

“I started to panic,” he said. “You’ve definitely had a trauma in your life – deep down. It’s something you try to forget. But you can never forget those kinds of things.”

Shakhtar Donetsk had previously evaded bombs. In 2014, when Russian forces last invaded Ukraine, missiles landed on Shakhtar’s stadium. Within days the club had recovered and headed west, to begin a nomadic existence: to a new home in Lviv, in the far west of the country, then east again to Kharkiv before settling in the capital, Kiev.

Now Shakhtar is on the move again. Last week, after obtaining special permission to take men of military age out of the country, their players and coaches landed in Istanbul. With the war leading to the suspension of the second half of the Ukrainian season, Shakhtar will soon be a tour team playing show games – the first Saturday in Greece – To draw attention to the plight of the Ukrainians and to raise money for the war.

Shakhtar Donetsk never stopped being a team. Now she hopes it will become a symbol too.

“I don’t know which team in the history of football can be compared to us,” said Srna. “No other team has felt or experienced what we’ve been through in the past eight years.”

Shakhtar officials were convinced that there would be no war even as Russia was massing forces and equipment on the Ukrainian border; even when players are starting to worry; Worried family members call them every day at a winter training camp in Turkey with news, warnings and pleas.

In February, Shakhtar’s CEO, Sergei Palkin, held a meeting to allay the growing concerns.

“I said everything would be fine, because the president of Ukraine, everybody was saying it’s okay, there will be no war,” Palkin said.

The team returned to Kiev. But Palkin was wrong. Three days later, the Russian troops crossed the border and instead of preparing to play the second half of the league season, the team management suddenly found themselves having to make completely different calculations.

While most of Shakhtar’s Ukrainian players moved to Lviv, which hosted the team when it first had to leave Donetsk, a group of more than 50 players and staff took shelter in a hotel owned by team owner Rinat Akhmetov. From there, timely assistance and frenzied phone calls helped devise a plan to keep the club’s foreign players and their families safe.

SRNA was a key channel in these discussions, including the player associations, Ukrainian and neighboring football federations, and UEFA, the sport’s governing body in Europe. He said his own experiences – he was also a member of the team when he last escaped to safety in 2014 – served as a guide.

“Unfortunately,” she said sadly, “this is my third battle.”

But after the players returned home to South America and elsewhere, Srna embarked on a journey of her own: It turned out to be a 37-hour trip to Croatia, where most of her family still lives. trustworthy. Two family members on her paternal side were killed after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, so hers wasn’t the only nerve that needed to be calmed.

But after touching base, Srna quickly began to tackle a new task: how to keep the dozens of children at Shakhtar’s youth academy outside of Kyiv out of danger. The effort was professional but also deeply personal: most of the children were only 12 and 13 years old, around the age when Srna first experienced war.

Srna’s first professional club, Hajduk Split, said they would be willing to host the kids if they could make it to the city. Another Croatian team, Dinamo Zagreb, said Shakhtar would provide buses if they took the players to Ukraine’s border with Hungary. Srna said the players and the rest of Shakhtar’s traveling team spent two days at Dynamo’s stadium, where they were fed and evaluated by doctors before moving on to Split.

Today, thanks to the efforts, more than 80 children, some of their mothers and a few aging coaches and medical staff, are safely in Croatia, far from the worst fears of war, education, and even replay.

“I put myself in their shoes,” Srna said of her involvement. “I didn’t want these kids to stay and listen to the bombings and bullets all day.

“I remember when I was a kid, who gave me chocolate, who gave me balls, who gave me water. And that was the most important thing.”

Like every other corner of the Ukrainian population, Shakhtar was affected by the war in more severe ways. A coach from the team’s academy died after his hometown was occupied by Russian forces in the first weeks of the war. Two staff members from the team’s merchandising department took up arms.

Shakhtar’s training ground in Kiev also bears the scars of the conflict. Parts of the training grounds were hollowed out by shelling, and artillery fire tore open hangars where the team stored their training equipment.

The conflict also brought attention to people like Ukraine’s richest man, Akhmetov. Like a handful of oligarchs in Russia, he became extremely wealthy – sometimes questions about suspicious vehicles – In the brutal and unpredictable aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Akhmetov pointed out that he should be seen contributing millions of dollars of his wealth to the war effort and said in an interview that he remained loyal to his country and his team. “All our efforts are focused on the only thing that matters – helping Ukraine win this war,” he said.

The efforts of Akhmetov and his football team are now intertwined with those of the Ukrainian government – relationships that have helped Shakhtar overcome some unique hurdles. For example, before moving to Turkey, the club needed special government exemptions from a state of emergency law that prohibited men of military age from leaving the country during the war. These confirmations finally arrived on Wednesday afternoon. Now that it is based in Istanbul, the tour will serve various functions.

The games, which kicked off with a match against Olympiakos in Athens on Saturday, are seen in part as a diplomatic tool, a chance to personalize Ukraine’s humanitarian crisis, raise money for the country’s military and provide humanitarian aid to its citizens.

But the matches will also play an important sporting role. Several Shakhtar Donetsk players are also members of the Ukraine national team, and the games will help ensure they are in shape ahead of an important qualifier for the 2022 World Cup in June. (Shakhtar’s opponent is playing Dynamo Kyiv. a series of exhibition games for the same reasons; Both clubs said they would call in players from other Ukrainian teams to add them to their roster, in part because Ukraine has the best chance of qualifying for the World Cup in the June playoffs.)

Shakhtar team, which will take part in the next round – matches against Polish and Turkish clubs are set and can watch matches against A-list opponents – lacking most of its international talent: most of these players have exercised a choice. they will temporarily sign with teams outside Ukraine after the start of the war. Most will never return. But some, like Brazilian defender Marlon, have said they will return, and others are considering their options.

“We’re not angry, we’re all human,” Srna said. “It’s important that they are safe and with their families.”

The new season in Ukraine is currently scheduled to start in July. With so much damage done to the country and the war still going on, the timeline looks like little more than a placeholder. When football returns, nothing will ever be the same as it eventually will be.

It is not even clear whether Donetsk, Shakhtar’s home, will remain part of Ukraine. Whatever the case, whatever the outcome, team officials said Shakhtar would never turn their backs on their roots.

“They can put the flag they want on Donetsk,” said Srna. “But Shakhtar will always be from Donetsk; It’s something that no one and nothing can change.”

Wherever Shakhtar calls home, whoever plays by the way, it’s impossible to even think of a single idea: matches against Russian opponents. Palkin said he is confident that European football officials will ensure that Ukrainian teams do not cross paths with opponents from Russia in future competitions. But if Shakhtar faced such a matchup, he had a simple answer. “We will not play,” he said.





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