![when does football season start when does football season start](https://www.ncaa.com/sites/default/files/public/styles/focal_point_large/public-s3/images/2019-05-16/gatech-clemson-fbs-fb-2019-acc.jpg)
“And I think that the fact they want to try and play it in Ukraine is another symbol that Ukraine can cope.” “I think the most important bit about it is showing continuity, survival, and defiance while Ukraine is at war with Russia,” said Andrew Todos, a journalist who runs Zorya Londonsk, an online platform about Ukrainian football. Ukrainian football’s lower tiers, the women’s league, and youth competitions are also set to resume. The resumption of the league was repeatedly postponed as the war unfolded and was officially cancelled in May without the title being awarded.īy June, the premier league clubs agreed that the new season had to start and, although the option of holding matches in Turkey or Poland was discussed, it was decided that the games should all take place in Ukraine. In areas of Ukraine where fighting raged, Russian missiles hit stadiums and training grounds, leaving shattered stands and cratered pitches. Most foreign players left their clubs under a FIFA ruling that allowed them to suspend their contracts. Shakhtar have been largely based in Warsaw, Poland, while Dynamo Kyiv was mostly in the Polish city of Lodz. Some clubs relocated to the safer west of the country, while some of the biggest clubs left the country in the first days of the war to play fundraising friendlies or European qualifiers. Shakhtar transformed a stadium in the western city of Lviv into a refugee shelter. Some Ukrainian players and coaches joined the military or the territorial defence forces, and clubs shifted to humanitarian work and fundraising to support the war effort. His wife and three children are now in Spain, having left Ukraine in the early days of the war. Stepanenko and his family were living near Kyiv, where Shakhtar played in exile having left their home city of Donetsk, in the eastern Donbas region, when war broke out there in 2014.Īs missiles fell on the capital in February, Stepanenko and his family sheltered in the basement of their house. On February 24, two days before the UPL was set to return from its 2021-22 winter break, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “For us now it’s very important.” Shakhtar Donetsk’s players train at the NSC Olimpiyskiy stadium in Kyiv before the first match of the new season ‘Continuity, survival, defiance’ “I think sport can help Ukraine tell our story to the world, and in Ukraine we can make people feel good,” he said. The games will be played behind closed doors and amid heavy security, mostly in stadiums in Kyiv and the west of the country, far from the front lines.īut officials have warned that Russia could intensify its attacks across the country this week, as Ukraine marks the six-month anniversary of the war and the country’s Independence Day on Wednesday. “When I play football, I don’t think about the war,” Stepanenko told Al Jazeera from Kyiv.
![when does football season start when does football season start](https://www.profootballnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/When-does-Week-1-NFL-season-start.png)
![when does football season start when does football season start](https://www.looper.com/img/gallery/the-ending-of-wynonna-earp-season-4-episode-11-explained/dark-angel-waverly-is-determined-to-fulfill-her-destiny-1617670283.jpg)
The game in Kyiv, between Shakhtar and FC Metalist 1925 Kharkiv, will kick off the 2022-23 Ukrainian Premier League (UPL) season, and the 33-year-old midfielder, who has more than 70 caps for the national team, says that, despite the threats, he hopes football can give people some respite from the relentless news of death and destruction. He toured Ukraine in March and April to convince club presidents not to let their teams wither away, and to prepare them for a new season, he said.Taras Stepanenko has played more than 200 times for the Ukrainian football club Shakhtar Donetsk, but Tuesday’s match will be the first that could be interrupted by air raids. "Many people at the front lines asked us to start thinking about restarting football in our country," Pavelko said. Pavelko said much of the impetus to restart the season in the fraught circumstances had come from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian army, who hope the league will help lift national morale. Two top-flight clubs - Desna Chernihiv and FC Mariupol - are being replaced in the 16-team league after their stadiums were destroyed.įC Mariupol's whole future has been thrown into question after Russia captured the club's home city in a brutal three-month siege that Ukraine says killed over 20,000 residents. Matches will be played without fans due to the risk of bombs and missiles. "This will be a unique competition: It will happen during a war, during military aggression, during bombardments," Andriy Pavelko, head of the Ukrainian Association of Football said.