Shakhtar Donetsk, a Ukrainian club from the Russian-speaking part of the country, faced AEK Athens in London at Chelsea's Stamford Bridge. Technically a home game, the match reflects how meaningless that concept has become. Shakhtar have not played at their home, the Donbas Arena, since May 2014, roughly 650 weeks ago. They have hosted matches in Odessa, Kyiv, Kharkiv and Lviv in the Ukrainian league, and in Warsaw, Hamburg, Gelsenkirchen, Krakow, Ljubljana and now London in European competition. Opponents often refuse to travel to Ukraine, where civilian airports are closed and air raid sirens sound a dozen times a day.
In these circumstances, the club is a symbol of defiance and an attempt to maintain normality during a war that has killed more than half a million people and displaced tens of millions. Sporting director Dario Srna said, "We are playing for people from Ukraine all over the world." Wherever the team goes, Ukrainians come to see them. Street vendors outside Stamford Bridge sold scarves bearing the names of Shakhtar players, and a cardboard cutout of Dwayne Johnson bore the face of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskyy. AEK fans, meanwhile, outsang the home support.
The arrangement followed Chelsea's failure to qualify for European competition. The club's former owner, Roman Abramovich, was forced to sell after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 because of his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Shakhtar's own powerful backer, Rinat Akhmetov, is an ethnic Russian from Donetsk whose mining and energy wealth built the club, which Forbes estimates at nearly $8 billion. Unlike many peers, Akhmetov chose to stay in Ukraine after the war began, despite past clashes with Zelenskyy and earlier ties to Viktor Yanukovych.
The match shows how sport in Ukraine has become a political and cultural statement. Shakhtar's presence in the Champions League carries meaning beyond the scoreline, offering fans displaced across the world a connection to home.
Source: ESPN Soccer · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing