For Ukraine, the road to Wembley began eight days ago when two of the team members loaded the team’s equipment onto a truck in Kiev and set out on the first leg of the mission, a 450-mile road trip to the Polish city of Rzeszow.
At 7pm last Sunday, four Dynamo Kyiv players and one from Oleksandriya, the coaching staff, medical team and various other FA staff, boarded a night train in the Ukrainian capital to take them west of Poland.
Twelve hours later, across the border in Przemysl, they hopped on a bus and traveled a further 50 miles by road to Rzeszow, where they met up with props and 10 teammates from Shakhtar Donetsk and Dnipro-1, clubs exiled in western Ukraine. and another from Oleksandriya, who had gathered in Lviv to leave by train at 5 in the morning on Monday.
There is no air travel in Ukraine, a consequence of the Russian invasion and the ongoing war, and the logistics required to compete for a place at Euro 2024 have become a military operation. Unfortunately, they are well practiced.
UEFA will not allow home games in Ukraine for security reasons, so clubs and the national team have rented stadiums in neighboring Poland for “home” games.
Ukraine’s trip to England for the Euro 2024 qualifier was complicated by the ongoing war
After Shakhtar’s Europa League round of 16 home game against Feyenoord in Warsaw, it took him 18 hours to travel from the Polish capital to Chisinau in Moldova. They then went by bus to the southern Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih to play Kryvbas KR in the Ukrainian Premier League the following Sunday.
Then they were off again, to Rotterdam, via Chisinau, for the second leg where, unsurprisingly, Feyenoord won 7-1. They returned to Lviv, where Shakhtar are this season, for a UPL game against Rukh Vynnyky.
Life is complicated and exhausting for footballers in Ukraine, but they won’t complain because they realize that those who fight in the east against invading Russian troops are the real heroes. His job, the most pleasant in comparison, is to fight for normality and behave like before the war to keep his football alive.
There are national competitions that take place in eight leagues, covering men’s and women’s, youth and amateur football, but nothing is really normal. There are no crowds because games can be called off by air raids. The players are heading to the shelters and there will be no time to evacuate the spectators safely.
A match between Rukh and Metalist Kharkiv on Independence Day in August, interrupted three times by sirens, took four and a half hours to complete because Russian military jets were in the sky. Fifteen of the 25 players called up by Ukraine manager Ruslan Rotan are playing their club’s football in a different environment than others in this Euro 2024 qualifying campaign.
There is a financial impact on the sport because the stadiums are empty. Tickets are sold for the games in Poland, but the crowds are small and consist mainly of Ukrainian women and children who have fled the fighting. There are few men because most are working or participating in the war effort.
Sponsor income is minimal, although there is some financial help from UEFA.
Ukraine coach Ruslan Rotan is in charge of the national team on an interim basis, as well as UPL duties.
Rotan, who earned 100 caps during a career spent mostly at Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk, is in charge on an interim basis. The 41-year-old, who was in midfield when Ukraine last met at Wembley to draw 1-1 in a World Cup qualifier in 2012, is also in charge of the Ukraine Under 21s and the club. Oleksandriya of the UPL.
Once together in the Polish city of Rzeszow on Monday, they loaded the cargo and this section of the group took a chartered flight directly to London. There, they were joined by 10 teammates who played for clubs outside Ukraine, including Arsenal’s Oleksandr Zinchenko and Chelsea’s Mykhailo Mudryk. Since Tuesday, they have been training at the Brentford training ground and staying at a nearby hotel. There was a practice match against the Brentford B team on Thursday.
The Ukraine players hope to boost morale at home with their performance at Wembley, which will be broadcast live on Ukrainian TV. Ukraine fans in the UK bought more than 3,000 tickets, with the English FA giving out a thousand more free to refugees and the families in Britain who sponsor them.
“What happens at Wembley will bring inspiration and positive emotion to the people of Ukraine,” Rotan said. “It is not just a game for the players but for the whole country to express our gratitude to the British people for supporting Ukraine. This game is first and foremost for our warriors and defenders who protect Ukraine and fight against a deadly enemy.”