The violence of the formula is proportional to that of the awakening of Ukraine. Manchester City player Oleksandr Zinchenko attacked Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, a “monster” to whom he wishes ” the most painful death in a since-deleted story. The screen remained, the idea too. A bit more diplomatic the day before, the left side had warned: “I cannot stay away and not give my opinion. It’s my country. »
It’s his life, too. He experienced war in 2014, like all the players of Shakhtar Donetsk, where he was a resident of the training center and had to leave for the anonymous FK Oufa… in Russia. Too big for the local championship, he will join Manchester City a year later. Zinchenko is not the only one to move: the whole of Shakhtar has been forced to flee. First in Lviv, then in Kiev (with matches in Kharkiv). “When the club was relocated, all the employees were moved, tells 20 minutes Vitor Severino, club assistant from 2019 to 2021. We are talking about hundreds of people, some followed by their families. »
The call for help from the Brazilians of Shakhtar
There are many who tried to flee at all at the time, frightened as the Brazilian colony of Shakhtar is today. From their hotel in downtown Kiev, they multiply the calls for help with the sole purpose of leaving. As Shakhtar centre-forward Junior Moraes said in an audio message relayed by a TNT Sports journalist: “The borders are closed, the banks, there is no fuel, there will be no food, no silver. We are gathered waiting for a plan to leave Ukraine. »
At the rival of Dynamo Kiev, we are rather inclined to die with arms in hand. “I will not leave Kiev to return to Romania, I am not a coward, swears the well-known Mircea Lucescu. I hope those important people with no brains will stop this war. I never would have thought that was possible. The former emblematic coach of Shakhtar had hardly trembled more in 2014 or felt more empathy for the deserters. Of the type to be more concerned with a Supercup match against Dynamo than with kalash shots from the separatists.
“At the time, agents wanted to exfiltrate players, told Mircea Lucescu to a Romanian journalist. One night I was woken up at 2:00 a.m. “The players want to leave!” I was angry, I explained everything to the guys. I told them that I would do everything to help them join big clubs, but not like this. Not by running away. Shakhtar deserved to be respected. »
Go tell that to the inhabitants of Lviv, the first city of refuge for the unemployed in the Donbass. Pro-European, Catholic, Ukrainian-speaking. Quite the opposite of Donetsk. Vitor Severino: “Darijo Srna [ancien adjoint, désormais directeur du football au club] told me that when they arrived in Lviv, Shakhtar was not very well received. That’s why they ended up leaving. Lviv was at the European end and Donetsk at the Russian end of the country. This culture shock was felt, and Shakhtar was never welcome in Lviv. »
Selfies between rivals and heightened nationalism
So we had to go to Kiev, to the sworn enemy. The greatest sacrilege. The former deputy, always: “I lived two years in Kiev, without ever having been able to set foot in Donetsk. I have never been able to go further than Mariupol. We carried our house on our backs. Or we were in rented training centers, we lived in the city of the great rival, it is necessarily very special. In my first year at Shakhtar, our home games were played in Kharkiv. It’s all confusing. To play at home, we had to fly. In two years, we made more than a hundred flights between league games, Champions League, training courses… We had the feeling of being constantly moved. »
The supporters, themselves, cannot follow: the country is too vast and the company too expensive. Deprived of a stadium and an audience, Shakhtar relies on a generational momentum – many young people choose the Black and Orange, very present in C1 and C3 – and a communication plan on the networks to maintain a semblance of community.
“The idea, explains Vitor Severino, was to make sure we were close to our supporters, given that we could no longer be physically. It’s important to maintain a link, even virtual, with the fans. »
Despite Lviv’s precedent, Shakhtar ended up attracting sympathy, with the only virtue of war being its ability to unite groups against a common enemy. The Portuguese deputy, accustomed to the animosity of the classicos of his country, was thus surprised that Dynamo supporters begged him for selfies and typed the discussion. Lukas Aubin, Russia specialist and author of Sportokratura under Vladimir Putin, A Geopolitics of Russian Sport (ed. Bréal): “There is more and more, in Ukrainian stadiums, a great expression of nationalist feeling through songs during club matches and, inevitably, the national team. »
UEFA facing Russian “sport power”
Until inviting themselves to the jersey of the selection for Euro 2021, stamped with the watermark of the borders of the country, which included Crimea (annexed by Moscow in 2014) and the mention “glory to Ukraine, glory to the heroes “. Enough to make Vladimir Putin swallow an entire box of Xanax, finally half satisfied by UEFA: the Ukrainians will be asked to hide this slogan that we cannot see.
It is the only time that the European body does not block Russian sports diplomacy, when Gianni Infantino has long been cozy with the head of the Kremlin. Long before the probable relocation of the Champions League final planned to Saint Petersburg, it was she who, after the Crimean annexation, opposed the passage of local clubs under the Russian flag for the purposes of “sport power “.
“Moscow regularly uses international and national sporting events to promote the greatness of Russia on the international scene and in the specific case of the return of Russian Crimea”, theorizes Lukas Aubin. There is little chance that Russia will try the same with Shakhtar. A scenario in which Putin would call on an oligarch friend, Rybolovlev or Abramovich style, to create a club with a Russian identity in eastern Ukraine would, according to him, be more plausible. There is room for. Eight years already that the beautiful Donbass Arena rings hopelessly hollow.