The coffee table is strewn with stopwatches and tactical notebooks. Instead, you better bring us to the World Cup. To achieve that, they need to defeat Scotland in a playoff game in Glasgow on June 1 and then Wales in Cardiff four days later. Many of our fans are soldiers in the Ukrainian army. The weight of expectations hangs heavy over the group. Professional soccer players are usually notorious for their pampered lifestyles, for their personalized boot deals, and fawning fans.
Daily conversations revolve not around celebrity girlfriends and nights out but how best to ship home medical supplies and heartfelt messages from troops on the frontline. Although Petrakov lacks top-level club experience, he spent much of his coaching career training Ukrainian youth teams, winning the under World Cup in And while he may lack the star billing of his predecessor, Petrakov has the advantage of having worked with the current Ukraine squad for many years through the youth ranks.
Even as adults in their 20s and 30s, they show him respect like that of a revered school master. Many of the 21 Ukrainian players here considered joining the army, but ultimately decided they were of more help to the war effort on the pitch. That dissonance can be painful to grapple with. The year-old was initially reluctant to leave home, believing that a negotiated settlement might arrive at any moment. But as the conflict escalated, he decided to follow his neighbors to the relative safety of the southwestern city of Chernivtsi—only for a Russian rocket to obliterate a building on their route just 20 minutes after they drove past.
The thought of it still makes him shudder. Midfielder Oleksandr Karavayev, a native of the seized southern city of Kherson, lives with the knowledge of close relatives still under Russian occupation. Nor will they let Karavayev or his brother—a seaman who was away when war broke out—back into Kherson. I tried to send them medicine, but we heard that Russians confiscate everything of value. They are near the sea and hear firing every day in the direction of Odessa and Mykolaiv.
Few coaches have ever had to rally a team amid such emotional turmoil. The challenge for Petrakov is to harness that heartache—the worry and collective hardships—and channel it into success on the pitch. He believes hate, rather than fear or anger, is a more potent weapon. It clearly motivates him too—he speaks with fiery eyes about Russian soldiers killing children and raping women in Ukraine. The sport is also a proud marker of identity. Ukraine has historically punched above its weight when it comes to soccer.
