The Ukrainian FA president, Andriy Pavelko, talks about how they managed to prepare for a season like no other
n one sense Andriy Pavelko feels prepared for the moment Shakhtar Donetsk and Metalist 1925 kick off a new football season on Tuesday. “When our national team played against Scotland in June I cried as soon as the anthem started playing, I just couldn’t believe it,” says the Ukrainian FA president. “And it’s going to be the same this time. Football will be the breath of fresh air that reminds people what we are fighting and dying for.
Only last Wednesday did Pavelko feel certain the sport would return on the date, one day before the celebration of Ukrainian independence, he had earmarked. That was when the security protocols were finally signed off after exhaustive conversations that were not always plain sailing. Should fans be allowed in? That question was easy enough to answer during wartime. Ought the precise time and location of games be kept secret? That was up for discussion but ultimately rejected.
Top-flight clubs were unanimous in giving it a go but two meetings with Volodymyr Zelenskiy in late May were pivotal in garnering political will. “I raised the question and heard a firm ‘Yes’,” he says. “They were conversations about what our society needs right now. It needs a strong signal.
The 12-year-old’s blood pressure had dropped to the extent he was barely alive on arrival and his survival is yet another tale of the local medics’ heroic work amid impossible conditions. Pavelko ascertained that he had been playing football shortly before his evacuation and that his favourite player was Oleksandr Zinchenko. He dialled Ukraine’s vice-captain immediately and the boy, unable to move and welling up with tears, took a video call with his idol.
These tales of kinship, bravery and, at times, tragedy could fill numerous books and Pavelko says he would willingly write one when Ukraine has eventually prevailed. People such as the boy in Mariupol unwittingly delivered the message he had been seeking to articulate: that, far from being mere frippery in times of unimaginable horror, football has its place.For the opener that will be Kyiv’s Olympiyskiy stadium, which hosted the Euro 2012 final and 2018 Champions League final.
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