Results
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Dynamo Kyiv and SC Dnipro-1 had their games postponed, due to their involvement in European qualifiers this midweek. Their original opponents – Inhulets and Oleksandriya were allowed to move forward their meeting from later on in the season to the opening midweek, as a result.
An emotional return
“The blue and yellow flag of Ukraine will wave again where it’s home is – there where it is meant to be, by right. In all temporarily occupied cities and villages of Ukraine it will wave, forever. There will always be blue and yellow, our Ukrainian flag. Happy Ukrainian flag day. Glory to Ukraine”.
The message of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, rang loud and clear on NSC Olimpiyskyy’s video screen. It was a bright, sunny morning on 23 August, as Shakhtar Donetsk and Metalist-1925 lined up on the pitch, amid the opening ceremony of the 2022-23 Ukrainian Premier League season.
Ukrainian Flag Day – the day of the season opener, marked 180 days from the 24th of February of this year. 180 days of Ukraine’s resistance and fight for their freedom had led to this occasion becoming a reality, from what in the first days of the Russian invasion had seemed an improbable and very distant dream.
This was always going to be a special and emotional event. Both sets of players walked out onto the pitch draped in Ukrainian flags around their shoulders. The Shakhtar players wore t-shirts saying: “Donetsk. Ukraine will win.”. Metalist-1925 played the game with an AFU (Armed Forces of Ukraine) logo instead of their sponsor’s logo on their kit.
The much-anticipated opening ceremony was rounded off by Yaroslav Holyk – a member of the Azov regiment. He was tasked with performing the ceremonial kick-off, which drew a visibly emotional response from Shakhtar forward, Danylo Sikan, amongst many others watching on. This was a timely reminder that the football itself pales in insignificance to the actual message that its restart in Ukraine sends to everyone within the county and around the world – life does, as it must, go on.
Shakhtar are a team all too familiar with facing significant war-related disruption. Following the initial Russian involvement within Ukraine in 2014, they were forced to relocate from their home in Donetsk and the newly-built, state of the art, Donbass Arena. In the following years, The Miners were forced to move from city to city, in search of an optimal ‘new home’. They eventually settled on Kyiv – sharing a city and home stadium with traditional rivals, Dynamo. They managed to maintain a high level of performance through the adversity between 2014-2022, winning multiple league titles, as well as achieving relative success in Europe – most notably a Europa League semi-final appearance in 2020.
Shakhtar’s issues may be more significant this season. They have lost all but one of their foreign players from last season. This list includes star players such as: David Neres, Dodo, Marcos Antonio, Pedrinho, Marlon and Manor Solomon. The latter leaving in controversial circumstances to Fulham – who were happy to make use of FIFA’s ruling letting players suspend their contracts with Ukrainian clubs, allowing them to obtain the winger without having to pay a transfer fee, which them and Shakhtar initially came close to agreeing to.
As a result, we saw a new-look Shakhtar on Tuesday. 21 of the 23 players in the matchday squad were Ukrainian, compared to just nine of 20 for their 2021/22 season opener. New signings Lucas Taylor and Neven Djurasek, who both had spells at Ukrainian side SC Dnipro-1, were the foreign representation of a Shakhtar side which failed to break down Metalist-1925.
The opening game of the season ended 0-0, with Shakhtar’s 20 shots at goal not being enough to deny the visitors an important point. More importantly, the game was completed without interruption and Ukrainian football was officially back.
The never-ending match
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It is a requirement for this season that all match-hosting stadiums are required to have bomb shelters in the event of an air raid siren sounding over the local area. It was quite a feat that on the Tuesday, all four scheduled games were completed without any unwanted interruption.
Following the surprisingly quiet opening day, 24 August marked Ukraine’s Independence Day. It came at the symbolic point of the half year anniversary of the start of the mass-scale invasion. As ever, it was a day of celebration for the public, albeit significantly quieter and cautious this year.
The expectancy was that a certain neighbour would want to ruin these celebrations, as its aims of intimidating and harming the Ukrainian public continued. The only fixture to be played on Independence Day was in Lviv, between local club Rukh and newly promoted Metalist Kharkiv.
The return of Ukraine’s former football powerhouse to the top division warrants a story in itself. In the late 2000s and early 10s, Metalist were establishing themselves alongside Shakhtar and Dynamo amongst the elite of Ukrainian football. Between 2006-2014, Metalist never dropped out of the Ukrainian Premier League top 3, peaking in the 2012/13 season with a second place finish on a club record 66 points (from 30 games).
However, a sad and abrupt end led to their expulsion from the top division after the 2016 season. Serhiy Kurchenko, who brought the club from former (and presently current) owner Oleksandr Yaroslavskyi, left Ukraine in 2014 – at which point the funding of the club stopped. Metalist were reformed in 2019 as ‘Metal’ and have now worked their way back to the top division thanks to new, significant investment, as well as having the ‘Metalist’ name and old club badge returned in 2021.
Their homecoming to the top division was marked with a 2-1 win on the sole fixture of Independence Day. Maksym Pryadun, making his debut for Metalist, was the scorer of the winning goal in the 66th minute. However, like most of Matchday 1, the action on the pitch seemed nothing more than an insignificant addition to all the events happening around it.
The ‘never-ending’ match was a confirmation and, for some, somewhat of a reality check that football during this time remains a risk – an event leaving itself vulnerable to such and potentially even more significant disruption.
The match was scheduled for 15:00 local time and we didn’t even have to wait until kick-off for the disturbances to begin. At 13:30, an air raid siren in Lviv meant that players, coaches, referees and the media all had to take cover in the stadium’s bomb shelter. According to @Buckarobanza (Twitter), who was one of the media members in attendance, some players were joking by saying that they would “get changed and play here”, as both the sets of players sat side-by-side with each other underground.
However, the players were able to kick-off the game, on time and on the grass above ground, rather than the concrete below it. Expectantly, the pre-match events were a sign of things to come – it would have been naïve to assume that all would be comfortable from that point on.
On three separate occasions during the game, air raid sirens meant that the match had to be stopped and everyone required to head back to shelter. The final whistle was blown at 19:27 local time – 4:27 hours on from the original start time.
This was much more than simply a match which was interrupted a few times and took longer to complete than expected. World football has had plenty of examples of these kinds of occurrences (extreme weather, crowd disturbances, etc.), with some games even lasting from first to final whistle into multiple days.
This was a message of defiance from Ukrainian football – that it will not be stopped, even through all the disruption which it may face. Much like the majority of the public, football players must adapt to the new normal and face these disruptions. The completion of the match, through significant adversity, shows how Ukraine and its people are determined to have life go on as normally as possible, during what is one of the most abnormal times for the country.
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What hasn't changed?
Ukrainian football has always been a topic filled with unique controversies, conflicts and characters. The notion of a variety of off-field matters taking precedent over the on-field action is a reality which dates back to long before February 2022.
While the majority of players, staff members and journalists at the game abided by the protocol correctly, that cannot be applied to Rukh Lviv’s club president – Grygoriy Kozlovskyi. According to journalist Andriy Senkiv, who was present at the game: “In the 44th minute, a siren can be heard, but no one understands what to do. After 20 seconds, the announcer asks to go to the shelter. The representatives of Rukh - Kozlovskyi and Puzanskyi - shout for the referee to let the first half play out.”
Following Kozlovskyi’s appeal for the referee to ignore the air raid siren and finish the first half, “on the 51st minute, the second alarm sounded. Kozlovskyi declared that he had his own dome and refused to go to the shelter. Eventually, he did end up going and was boozing with his friends right there”.
The next day, after Senkiv’s report on the events of the match, he had his press accreditation for the season annulled by Rukh.
“I understand everything, but everything is equally funny. I didn't eavesdrop on Kozlovskyi - he himself wanted to be heard in the VIP lounge of Ukraina, and then he, himself, came to the shelter with his friends. But it's my fault, okay.”
“I won't go to Rukh matches again, I didn't really plan to. To sit in the same room with a king, to whom everyone is looking into his mouth (sarcastically referring to Kozlovskyi), is such a pleasure, I tell you. Ukrainian football is back in my life again.” commented Senkiv on Telegram.
The actions of Kozlovskyi and Rukh have instigated a very negative reaction from the Ukrainian football public. With the club themselves also being at the source of another controversy…
TV rights clash
TV rights have been a constant, nauseating discussion point of the Ukrainian top division for years
Unlike the UK TV rights for the English Premier League, for example, where a certain package of games are sold to Sky Sports, BT Sport, Amazon, Ukrainian TV rights have operated on a club-by-blub basis. This has meant that channels broadcasted home games of their contracted clubs. The most common channel ‘rivalry’ of the past involved ‘2+2’ and ‘Futbol’ channels which in the past demonstrated visible pro-Dynamo and pro-Shakhtar bias, respectively.
The talk of a single broadcaster of all league matches had been rife for years. For this season, it seemed as if that fantasy had, finally, become reality. However, it would be very unlike Ukrainian football for all that to go as smoothly as it seemed, when Setanta Sports had announced exclusive broadcast rights for this 2022/23 season.
1+1 Media (owners of the ‘2+2” channel) still managed to agree rights to broadcast the home matches of Dynamo Kyiv, SC Dnipro-1, Metalist Kharkiv and Zorya Luhansk, with these clubs – a quarter of the total teams of the league.
This recipe for disaster led to two broadcast buses arriving to Uzhorod for the Zorya Luhansk – Vorskla Poltava game, culminating in Setanta – the exclusive broadcasting rights holders of the UPL, not being allowed into the stadium. The reaction from Setanta was immediate, they put out the following statement on their Telegram channel:
"Football club "Zorya" violated the television pool agreement. For this reason, Setanta Sports failed to receive the signal of the match "Zorya" - "Vorskla", about which the management of the Premier League was promptly informed for further reaction."
The FootballHub (2+2 channel’s affiliated YouTube channel) stream of the game was taken down by YouTube due to a violation of broadcasting rights. Similarly, Rukh Lviv attempted to broadcast their match against Metalist Kharkiv (the never-ending game) on their own YouTube channel, after they also didn’t allow Setanta Sports TV crew into the stadium prior to kick-off – the outcome was the same as with FootballHub’s attempt.
It is intriguing to see how this saga will develop. The actions of Zorya Luhansk and Rukh Lviv from the opening matchweek show a clear resistance from some clubs, including the other teams which agreed to have their home games broadcasted by 2+2, towards a single broadcast rights holder for the UPL.
It was reported earlier today by Ukrainian journalist Ihor Burbas, that both Rukh and Zorya have been ordered to pay 530,000 UAH each for their breaches of broadcasting rights regulations.
Vernydub's fiery return
Krybas Kryvyi Rih, alongside Metalist Kharkiv, are the other newly promoted team for the 2022/23 season. Much like Metalist, Kryvbas were also well-established top division members – ever present in the top division between 1992-2013, before financial issues sent the club into turmoil.
In their first season back, they were led by a fellow returnee to the UPL – Yuriy Vernydub. Vernydub had achieved unthinkable success with Sheriff Tiraspol last season, which gathered him and the club Europe-wide attention and headlines. Vernydub recorded victories in the Champions League group stage over Shakhtar Donetsk and most notably at the Santiago Bernabeu against Real Madrid, leading Sheriff to a 3rd place finish and Europa League knockout round appearance.
Mid-season, Vernydub swiftly returned to Ukraine following the start of the Russian invasion, joining a territorial defence unit in order to protect his country.
His return to the UPL and football in general, was overshadowed by his passionate, Vernydub-style outbursts towards the referees of their season opener against Kolos Kovalivka. As football during the COVID-19 outbreak has demonstrated, matches played in empty stadiums allow for supporters to hear all that goes on amidst a game – including communication between players, coaches, referees. This meant that viewers of Kolos – Kryvbas had the pleasure of listening to all of Yuriy Vernydub’s touchline discussions with his players and the referees.
Some fiery, profanity-filled instructions to his players were easily audible during the first half of the game. His attention shifted towards the match officials, as the game stretched into the second half. A few quotes include: “F***’s sake, let them play!”, “Get out of here (referring to his technical zone towards the 4th official), don't stand here. That’s it, get out of my zone, I don't want you standing in my zone."
On the 80th minute, many more instances later, the linesman had called the referee to send off Vernydub (who was already on a yellow card). Vernydub reacted: “Well, what do you want to tell him? Did I tell you something? Why are you calling him? (the referee) What are you doing? What are you doing?".
The culmination of Vernydub’s stay on the touchline was a punch swinging gesture towards the linesman and final remarks of “Into your face, f***” before he took his place just behind the Kryvbas bench, near the player tunnel entrance.
Vernydub's frustration summed up Kryvbas' opening afternoon. They were beaten 1-0 by Kolos.
Conclusion
The UPL is well and truly back. Through the opening round of games this midweek, followers of the league were treated to the traditional amount of feistiness and controversy which everyone had been so used to prior to the break from domestic football.
Some may have expected for the relatively sleazy scenes, like we have seen this midweek to die down, given the sensitive time in Ukraine. However, in many ways, it is nice that life in Ukrainian football seems to go on as normal – in a time where air raid sirens can delay games for hours, the UPL will always remain the UPL with all of its unique quirks.
The second matchweek gets underway on Saturday. Dynamo Kyiv and SC Dnipro-1's clash will be the highlight of the round, as they both get their campaigns started, following their European qualification matches. That game is currently scheduled to kick-off at 17:00 local time (15:00 U.K.) on Sunday.