The match in Valdebebas was the one I had always dreamed of. She raised her arms, clenched her fists and, while she looked at the sky with a face of disbelief showing the world her happiest of smiles, Yuriy Vernydub (56 years old) celebrated one of the most important goals of his career. The goal in the last minute of the Champions League match against Real Madrid caused, in September 2021, the most prestigious victory in the history of the FC Sheriff and finished exalting a coach who only five months later no longer occupies the bench of this club from the Republic of Transnistria that competes in the Moldovan league. A goodbye that has had nothing to do
with unfair goals or unexpected defeats. Neither with bad results nor with an unfair decision of the president of the entity.
The coach led the team for the last time against the Portuguese Braga last Thursday and shortly after he said goodbye to his team with a lump in his throat before shaving, packing and enrolling in the army. Just a few hours before that sad goodbye, the Russians had begun the attack on Ukraine. Like thousands of compatriots and numerous elite athletes, Vernydub He has left everything behind to return home with the mission of defending his country from the invasion. A vital game to help his people started from the conscience and unknown to all of them, the most important of his careers although on this occasion there are no titles or medals at stake. Yes, the applause, the affection and the pride of its people.
“May God protect Yuriy, my technical director, who went to Ukraine,” Peruvian defender Gustavo Dulanto wrote on his social networks after the departure of a coach who has left the Sheriff ranked at the top of the Moldovan league. A player between 1984 and 2002, the life of this coach born in the city of Zhytomyr has always been football and he was very happy directing his team, but after being eliminated against Braga in the Europa League he felt the call of his country. The first bombings and the images of Russian tanks advancing on the land where she grew up and learned to hit the ball stirred her consciousness. Pain appeared in her heart. «I was born in Ukraine. If they need my help, I will always be there », she affirmed at the press conference that she offered in Portugal, already slipping the intention that she confirmed hours later, embarking on the trip that she could never imagine.
Vernydub he no longer directs Dulanto or the rest of his boys, now he is the one who receives orders. He is one of the elite Ukrainian athletes who in recent days has changed the tracksuit for the camouflage uniform. The training of all of them has given way to military instruction. From the Champions League to war, a journey as unprecedented as it is dangerous.
Chess players and boxers
The athletes have not turned their backs on their country, although not all have followed the same formula to fight against the invader. Many continue to compete, refusing to face rivals from Russia as a form of protest. It is the case of Elina Svitolina, eliminated from the Mexican tournament in Monterrey by refusing to coincide on the track with the Russian Potapova. Other compatriots have opted for a much less ‘diplomatic’ path and have not hesitated to shoulder their rifles. The fire is real, deadly, in Ukraine there are no blank bullets.
Georgy Timoshenko he is used to strategy and winning hundreds of peaceful battles, because he is a chess grandmaster, but his war is no longer on the boards. Between the bombs and the rifle bursts, the rooks and bishops are now just entertainment for this 55-year-old chess player who has been seen on social media dressed in military uniform through a message posted by the Ukrainian Pevel Eljanov, number 55 of the FIDE ranking. “Master Timoshenko has taken a weapon and gone to defend our capital,” he revealed.
Much more accustomed to the harshness of a sport like theirs, Ukrainian boxers, one of the great schools in recent decades, have mobilized to defend the country with weapons. For years they have done it on the ring, but now they fight far away from the majestic pavilions in which until recently they celebrated their evenings. Vasil Lomachenko (34 years old) has been world champion in the WBO featherweight and super featherweight categories, as well as gold at the 2012 Olympic Games. After the Russian invasion, the boxer, who is still active, has given way to the soldier and his mission, as a member of the Belgorod-Dnestrovsky Territorial Defense Battalion, is the defense of the town in the south-west of the country where he was born.
Retired heavyweight world champions and sons of a high-ranking soldier from the former Soviet Union, the Klitschko brothers (Vitali and Wladimir), two of the great glories of Ukrainian boxing, also try to keep the morale of the troops deprived high. of their gloves, but armed with rifles. Uniformed, their images can be seen on social networks. This battalion of Ukrainian athletes who fight against the Russian invader has also been joined by Yaroslav Amosov (28 years old), who last year became the first champion of that country in bellator 260, one of the specialists of mixed martial arts.
“I would like to go to the front”
Although more and more are joining, not all athletes who are outside the country and who would like to wield a weapon to expel the Russian forces can take that step. Some due to family pressure, others out of respect for the clubs they defend. “If I could, I would go to the front to defend my territory,” the defender recently confessed on Radio Marca. Vasyl Kravets, Sporting footballer. A situation similar to Yaroslav Popovych, director of the Trek Segafredo and former runner in cycling teams such as Astana and the Discovery Channel, who has acknowledged that he has been thinking for days about going to his country and taking up arms, an option that continues to cross his mind.
The one who has confirmed that he has enlisted in the Ukrainian Army, one of the last to do so, has been the tennis player Sergey Stakhovsky (233 in the ATP), who was eliminated in the preliminary phase of the last Australian Open.
Suffering the conflict thousands of kilometers away, Lunin, Real Madrid goalkeeper, has participated in collections to raise funds to help a country that, like many other athletes, has to defend from a distance. Without weapons, but with the same determination and firmness as his compatriots.
