This, we should also remember, is a Ukraine side for whom six starting players had not played a competitive football match for club or country since war curtailed the domestic league at the end of February. It was a moving and invigorating riposte but Ukraine’s performance was also notable for the poise and maturity they showed in clinically dispatching a Scotland team unbeaten at home in 12 matches - their best run for 44 years. His eyes moistening, he added: “I hope this never touches you, but you just have to think of the women and children dying every day, the women being raped and gang-raped.” For the armed forces, this is our victory for them.” We did everything for the people back home. “We played for Ukrainians who suffer every day. “We played for those fighting in trenches, who fight for their last drop of blood,” Petrakov said.
Ukraine, managed by Oleksandr Petrakov, outplayed their hosts and merited even more than their 3-1 victory. What followed at Hampden, therefore, must go down as one of the great sporting performances. It is all about offering escape, a boost to morale back home, but also ensuring more people understand what is happening to our people.” “The winning or losing is not the big thing. “It’s the biggest game I have ever attended,” he said. One supporter, Yuri, had travelled from the United States for the match. In sporting circles, we sometimes speak of teams who are simply happy to be there and enjoy an occasion.īut for many Ukrainians in Glasgow on Wednesday, this was the overwhelming sensation. Ukraine fans celebrate the remarkable win over hosts Scotland on Wednesday (Photo: Getty Images) It was incredible, therefore, that this game was really happening that a Ukrainian team was able to travel to Scotland to represent a nation state that still exists. “But let’s be clear: I worried there would be no Ukraine and no national team, particularly if the capital city of Kyiv was captured. But I kept it in my email, like a small but significant symbol of hope. Part of me genuinely feared the ticket and booking confirmation would not be needed anymore. I just looked at my diary and saw ‘Scotland v Ukraine’. People were talking like it could be a matter of days. He recalls: “The whole idea back then was that Ukraine would be destroyed and no longer exist. He noted the scheduled date of April 8 on his calendar, which is when the two sides were originally supposed to meet to decide who would play Wales for a place at the finals this winter, before the match was rearranged for last night due to the escalation of the war. In January, he had bought tickets to take his seven-year-old daughter Lidia to attend the World Cup play-off between his adopted home of Scotland and the country of his birth, Ukraine, at Hampden Park. Gorash is a lecturer at the University of Strathclyde, where he teaches mechanical engineering. In early March, during the weeks that followed Russia’s bloody and brutal invasion of Ukraine, Yevgen Gorash glanced at the calendar in his Glasgow home.