Ukraine announces the return of its football league despite the war

If Ukraine is known as the breadbasket of Europe, it is because of areas like Kovalivka.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
16 July 2022 Saturday 11:34
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Ukraine announces the return of its football league despite the war

If Ukraine is known as the breadbasket of Europe, it is because of areas like Kovalivka. In the surroundings of this town, located 75 kilometers south of Kyiv, there are thousands of hectares of corn and wheat that, until before the war, supplied a large number of countries beyond the European borders. There, at the Kolos Stadium, a goal was scored for the last time on a football pitch. It was on December 12, when Kolos Kovalivka came back in agony with goals in minutes 88 and 90. Then came the break due to the cold that two months later would turn into war. Like the whole country, soccer stopped until in April it was decided to end the league, with the title of champion deserted.

The war with Russia is going on for a long time and life has to go on, even if it is in conditions that were unimaginable for the population until not so long ago. This week the Zelensky government announced that the new first and second division season will start on August 23, one day before the celebration of independence day from the Soviet Union. All the information about it is still unknown, but the Minister of Youth and Sports, Vadym Gutzeit, gave some details. The championship will be played without an audience in the stands and all the decreed security measures must be respected. "If there are airstrikes, the games will be interrupted and the players, coaches and other personnel will quickly move to a shelter," Gutzeit said. The Ukrainian Premier will have little to do with what it was. The championship is further weakened due to the mass exodus of foreign soccer players who left the country when Putin launched the military offensive. There is also no persuasive capacity to attract new players. No one wants to go play in a country at war.

FIFA approved transitional measures to the regulatory framework to allow players and coaches to unilaterally terminate their contracts with Ukrainian clubs until June 2023. This decision to safeguard the safety and well-being of the players has been criticized by some entities such as the Shakhtar Donetsk, with a large cast of Brazilians. Its executive director, Sergei Palkin, criticized in The Athletic that the agents take advantage of the situation by asking the interested teams for commissions so that their representatives break their contracts and do not have to pay any transfer, which further reduces the economy of those clubs . The plan is for the league to be played away from the hottest areas of the war: between Kyiv and the west of the country. Depending on the escalation of the conflict, it is not ruled out to transfer it to Hungary or Poland. It will be in one of those countries where Shakhtar, homeless since the outbreak of the conflict in Donbass in 2014 and leader when the championship was suspended, dispute the Champions League.