This game kicked off to chants of ‘Putin Khuylo’ (Putin is a dickhead).
The modern evil monster overshadowed an eve-of-Halloween clash at 3.30pm on a Wednesday.
Third, the wolfmen of Polissya, versus Ukraine Premier League fifth and the kids, off school for half term, were out in droves.
Continue reading Howl lotta love – Polissya Zhytomyr 2 Kryvbas Kryvyi Rih 1
For my money, it’s the most beautiful ground in the world.
War has renewed the Lobanovski stadium’s former glory.
Dinamo play here, not the Olimpiski, as do Zorya Luhansk, despite leaving Luhansk ten years back.
Continue reading Where the trees sing – Dinamo Kyiv 1 Shakhtar Donetsk 1
Ukraine soldiers on, and so does its premier league.
Football is played in the face of evil. In a sense, its very existence is poetic. And symbolic.
Never a dull moment here. Woken at 3am by a Shahed flying over Kyiv, it was panic stations.
Almost as scary was the five-hour bus to Oleksandriya driven on bad roads by a guy seemingly on steroids whose phone was stuck to his ear most of the way (top tip: NEVER get the bus to Oleksandriya).
Continue reading UPL plays on – FK Oleksandriya 1 Vorskla Poltava 0
Last game before the winter break, as Ukraine wraps up warm and retreats into hibernation.
Vorskla, fifth, versus Zorya, third.
The Pele Museum in Lugansk is, frankly, utterly surreal.
Thousands of miles away from Brazil, near the Russian border, it’s a shrine to Nikolai Khubodin’s childhood infatuation with the greatest player ever.
Nikolai, who played for his home town team Zorya Lugansk, heard about him on the radio in 1965 when he was ten.
Anyone from Cardiff will tell you of the joy of watching a team play in blue and white!
Despite the stick they get, sometimes footballers really do earn their dough. This was such a night. A Europa League game not to die for.
Sleet, freezing temperatures and bitter winds in Dnipropetrovsk on a wet Thursday in November.
Well, would you fancy it?
Continue reading Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk 4 Pandurii Targu Jiu 1
No dancing snowflakes this time. Although it did hit -2C. It was time to make footballing history – the first sighting of Partick Thistle headgear at the Olimpiskyii.
Miles from Nowhere 