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Soccer’s Return to Ukraine Is Marred by Broken Contracts and Bad Faith


Like his fellow executives at football clubs across Europe, Sergei Palkin of Ukrainian side Shakhtar Donetsk has spent weeks this summer negotiating player purchases.

England and Fulham, a side recently promoted to the English Premier League, have paid a fee of around $8 million to Manor Solomon, Shakhtar’s Israeli attacker. Palkin then agreed to accept double payment from Lyon, in France’s Ligue 1, to another foreign-born star of Shakhtar, 22-year-old Brazilian midfielder Tetê.

The deals are a financial lifeline for Shakhtar: They will provide a vital cash injection into the club’s accounts ravated by war with Russia in exchange for valuable talents that in one In some cases, they no longer want to play football in Ukraine.

But just as contracts for deals, and others, were about to be signed, world football’s governing body, FIFA, announced that it had extend a rule allows foreign players under contract with Ukrainian clubs to temporarily go elsewhere without penalty. The rule – created in March as an interim measure when Ukraine’s season was suspended – will now be in place for the entire 2022-23 season, FIFA said.

And with that, both Lyon and Fulham informed Palkin that they were canceling the multimillion-dollar deals the two sides had discussed. Instead, they will not take the players for nothing.

“They were just talking about the football family,” Palkin said. “But in real life there is no football family.”

A Lyon spokesman said the club objected to Palkin’s retelling of the events, but declined to provide details. Fulham declined to comment.

Both teams followed the rules, but the incidents – and others – left Palkin frustrated and angry. In July, Shakhtar announced plans to sue FIFA for $50 million – the value of contracts evaporated when the rule allowing players to break contracts with the Ukrainians was extended.

The situation is a far cry from the widespread messages of solidarity with Ukraine from football leaders and rival teams in the days and weeks after the Russian invasion began in February. Instead, Palkin said he was disgusted with the way some in the football community treated Ukrainian clubs like Shakhtar. Words of support and kind words have been replaced by broken promises and poaching promising players and young peopleIn his view, it’s all driven by the kind of oil that lubricates the industry: money.

Lyon, for example, recently offered to pay Shakhtar €3 million, or about $3.01 million, for the permanent transfer of Tetê, Palkin said – less than a fifth of what Shakhtar believes it has paid. agreed on a fee for him earlier this summer. . Palkin declined the offer.

“It’s ridiculous,” he said. “It’s peanuts. That’s not respect from FIFA or the clubs.”

FIFA says its position is that allowing foreign players under contract to Ukrainian teams to temporarily play elsewhere is better than the alternative: players unilaterally breaking their contracts. But while there seems to be no indication that the war will end, there is also currently little chance that many players will. back to their Ukrainian clubs.

When Shakhtar hits the field on Tuesday for his first game on Ukrainian soil since December last year – part of the long-delayed restart of the country’s premier league – there will be little in common. from the familiar burnt orange color of the team. For the first time in two decades, a team known for its roster of imported stars will be almost exclusively Ukrainian. There will be no fans at the stadium in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital and Shakhtar’s newest temporary home ground, for the match against Metalist 1925. And players from both teams will undergo drills on what to do. must do in case they hear the air raid sirens while they are on the field.

Nothing is out of the ordinary, Palkin admits, but for the sake of Ukrainian football, the game must be played. He said, if the season does not start, some football clubs in the country may be in a hurry.

Two clubs have left the 16-team league: FC Mariupol and Desna Chernihiv, both of whom announced their withdrawals before this season. Chernihiv, near the border with Belarus, has been ravaged by Russian forces, and Mariupol, a southern port city, is now under Russian control. The city, besieged for weeks, has been described by the United Nations as “the deadliest place in Ukraine.”

However, even in other cities, signs of war will be unavoidable. Palkin said the threat of a Russian attack on the matches could not be lessened.

“They can target anything in Ukraine,” he said of the Russian military and its allies in the war. Shakhtar will play his games in Kyiv and Lviv, the city where at the start of the war the club assisted in paying to convert the football stadium they were using into a refugee shelter. problem.

Shakhtar will also play in Europe’s top club competition, the Champions League, but those matches will be held in Warsaw because European football’s governing body, UEFA, has banned Ukraine from hosting matches. internationally as a safety precaution.

Shakhtar officials have also proposed playing Ukrainian league matches outside the country. But the government rejected the idea, deciding that live matches, even in empty stadiums and in the relatively safer western part of the country, would serve as a spearhead. importance of the propaganda war.

“Ukrainian sport and unstoppable will to win on all fronts!” Ukraine’s sports minister, Vadym Gutzeit, wrote on Facebook page last week. His post, heralding the return of the Ukrainian Premier League, outlined a list of protocols to be followed at each match, including an evacuation plan, a permanent shelter no more than 500 metres. or approximately 1,640 feet, from each stadium and a scenario for Stadium Announcements in the event of an air raid siren: “Attention! Air alarm! We ask everyone to follow us to the shelter! “

While Gutzeit’s post highlights the unusual conditions under which football will return to Ukraine, it also highlights why many players are not eager to return and participate.

Palkin said about 10 players from Shakhtar’s under-19 team have refused to return to Ukraine, where a youth tournament is also being held. “I understand them,” he said. “I can’t guarantee they’ll be safe.”



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