‘We have to do something for our people’: Ukraine nurture World Cup dream

The team have led a nomadic existence since Russia invaded and face a playoff against Sweden in Valencia on Thursday.

Serhiy Rebrov, head coach of Ukraine. Pic: Franco Arland/Getty Images

Around the pitch of the latest stadium Ukraine will call home, a set of banners reels off the venues that have accommodated them in the past four years. The list goes on: Lodz, Prague, Leverkusen, Wroclaw, Warsaw, Krakow, Murcia, Poznan and Trnava, some of those in multiple. 

If that is an exhausting read then imagine the effect on Serhiy Rebrov’s players, who have been unable to add Kyiv to the roll call since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.