On 24 February, the situation in Ukraine deteriorated dramatically, and the fighting raged in Kiev.
After a short winter break, the Ukrainian Premier League (referred to as the Ukrainian Super League) was supposed to reopen this weekend, but affected by the situation, the Ukrainian Premier League issued an official announcement on the 24th: the domestic league was suspended.
Although sports have nothing to do with politics, in the case of the sharp deterioration of the situation in Russia and Ukraine, football is inevitably affected, especially the future fate of several powerful teams such as European regulars Shakhtar Donetsk and Dynamo Kiev are also full of uncertainty.
The league was forced to shut down and the players hid in hotels to pray
The Ukrainian Super League is a force that cannot be ignored on the european football map. According to the conventional division, the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga and Ligue 1 are known as the five major leagues and belong to the top leagues, while the Ukrainian Super League and the Dutch League, the Soviet Super League, the Russian Super League and other leagues basically belong to the Second Division of Europe.
Shakhtar Donetsk and Dynamo Kiev are the superpowers of the Ukrainian Super League and a regular in Europe, defending the honor of Ukrainian football and sending a large number of talents to the Ukrainian national team. These two clubs not only almost won the Ukrainian Super League, but also had their own place in the European arena. Shakhtar Donetsk has even won the European championship – in the final 2009 UEFA Cup, the miners beat Werder Bremen to top Europe, and in the first round of the Champions League group stage last season, they even beat Real Madrid 3-2 on home. Dynamo Kiev has produced superstars such as Shevchenko, and the club has won the Soviet Premier League 13 times in its history, the Ukrainian Super League 16 times, and in The European Arena, the team has also won the European Cup Winners' Cup twice and the European Super Cup once.
This season's Ukrainian Super League, the schedule has passed the halfway point. After playing the 18th round in mid-December last year, the Ukrainian Super League entered a brief winter break, with Miner Donetsk and Dynamo Kiev unsurprisingly in the top two, with miners leading by two points.
According to the schedule, Wuchao originally ended the winter break and rekindled the war this weekend. However, the sharp deterioration of the situation has made it impossible for the Ukrainian Super League to continue. On the 24th, the Ukrainian Super League issued an official statement: in view of the implementation of martial law in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Premier League has been suspended.
Shakhtar Donetsk was supposed to play away against 10th-ranked Metallurg Kharkiv on the 26th, but the league was suspended, flights were cancelled, and the team is currently trapped in a hotel in Kiev.
On the 24th, the team's Brazilian striker updated his social media: "The situation is very serious now, I and my friends and family are trapped in Kiev, we are waiting for the plan to escape from here, at the moment everyone is trapped in a hotel, please pray for us." ”
Affected by the situation, the miners have been wandering in three places for 8 years
In fact, the Donetsk miners have been based in Kiev for many years. Affected by the situation, the miners have been away from Donetsk since 2014.
In 2014, in Entnetsk became the forefront of an exchange of fire between Ukrainian government forces and independent forces, and the Donetsk miners had been forced to wander between three other Ukrainian cities for eight years.
The Main Stadium of the Miners Club, Donbas Athletic Stadium, was destroyed in the fighting, making it impossible for Don Miners to conduct daily training in their own stadium and ensure the safety of home games. The team borrowed lviv arena (Lviv) and Kharkiv Metallurg stadium (Kharkiv) as home stadiums, and at the beginning of the 2020 season the team relocated to Kiev, sharing the Kiev Olympic Stadium with its old rival Dynamo Kiev. Not surprisingly, in the opponent's turf, the miners' attendance in the game continued to decline. But the team's results are still outstanding, and they have not fallen out of the top two of the Ukrainian Super League in all seasons since 2014, and their last four league titles, as well as last season's defeat of Real Madrid, were all done on the way.
The team's wandering (which can also be understood as moving west) also made it difficult for some players from the Donetsk Donbas region to accept. Rakitsky, who made 54 appearances for the Ukrainian national team, left after four years of wandering with the team to join Russian Super League side Zenit St. Petersburg, because for Rakitsky, who grew up speaking Russian in donetsk in the east, he was closer to Russia. Because of this, Rakitsky angered some Ukrainian fans, and he has never been called up again by the Ukrainian national team.
"After the war, we will return to Donetsk and kiss the streets." Serner, former captain of The Donetsk Miner and current sporting director, said so.
Wudong team joins the Russian Premier League? UEFA will not agree
In fact, the same fate as the Donetsk miners is the Luhansk Dawn team, and the reason for the wandering is of course the same as that of the miners, they are from the conflict zone Donetsk and Luhansk. The Luhansk Dawn team are currently ranked fourth in the Ukrainian Super League. As one of the oldest football teams in Ukraine, Luhansk Dawn has 99 years of team history and is the only 3 teams in Ukraine to have won the Soviet championship. After 2014, Dawn Luhansk moved its home stadium to the Slavtic Stadium in the northwestern city of Zaporozhye, where it is still in use today.
In addition to Shakhtar Donetsk and Dawn Luhansk, this season's Ukrainian Premier League has a team from the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine – the current bottom-ranked Mariupol, the club in the second largest city in the Donetsk Oblast, and they have been holding on to their home stadium, The Boyko Stadium.
However, the recent deterioration of the situation has also allowed artillery fire to burn near the Mariupol Stadium. To be on the safe side, they traveled to Antalya, Turkey, during the winter break for winter training. Earlier this week, Mariupol also issued a statement that it would not give up its home stadium anyway.
The future fate of these three ukrainian eastern teams is also a matter of concern, and even some voices believe that the possibility of one of the clubs joining the Russian Premier League is not ruled out, but Spanish media analysis believes that such a plan is almost impossible to get the consent of UEFA, after the Sevastopol club from Crimea applied to join the Russian Premier League after leaving the Ukrainian league, but was rejected by UEFA.
According to the official announcement of UEFA, at 10:00 a.m. local time on the 25th, UEFA will hold an extraordinary meeting of the executive committee, of course, the topic is not whether to agree to the participation of these clubs in eastern Ukraine to join the Russian Super League, but will discuss whether to continue to place the Champions League final on May 28 this year in St. Petersburg, Russia. EU lawmakers have recently called on UEFA to change their plans for the Champions League final in St. Petersburg.
According to espnant and other media reports, it will become a fact that UEFA has changed the venue of this season's Champions League final.