Shakhtar Donetsk travels across Europe to raise money for war victims

When Russia began its invasion of Ukraine on the morning of February 24, Darijo Srna was awakened at 6 am by the sound of air raid sirens.

It was a noise that the former international football star says immediately transported his “head and body” back to his native Croatia, where he lived at the age of eight when war broke out in what was then Yugoslavia.

So when his football club Shakhtar Donetsk was forced to leave Kiev, the city that had been one of the team’s many temporary bases since 2014 at the start of the Russian invasion, it was unfortunately a scenario Srna was all too familiar with.

The former Croatian international is only 39 years old, but he has lived through three wars in his life; first in Croatia in the early 1990s, then in 2014 in the Donbass region of Ukraine – the real home of Shakhtar – and now in much of the rest of the country.

“It wasn’t a good memory,” Srna, who is Shakhtar Donetsk’s director of football, said of his childhood. “As I started to forget some of it and enjoy my life, I heard the sirens again.

“I’m strong. I want to be strong but sometimes it’s hard because of everything because you lost your home twice. Right now, it’s important to be positive, be strong and make a positive impression on everyone.”

Srna — who, along with the rest of the team, managed to escape Ukraine the day after the invasion of Russia began — found her strength helping those most affected by the war in Ukraine.

Shakhtar, where Srna is a club legend after 15 seasons, have been homeless for nearly eight years, since clashes between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces broke out in 2014.

After retiring from professional football in 2019, Srna took on the role of assistant coach at Shakhtar before becoming director of football at the club.

He is aware that his situation and that of the rest of the team are nothing compared to those fighting on the front lines and has helped lead the club’s effort to support Ukrainian soldiers and refugees.

Shakhtar are currently in the midst of a European tour — the ‘Global Peace Tour’ — during which they will play against various clubs to raise money for those caught up in the war.

“We cannot compare ourselves to the people of Ukraine,” Srna told CNN Sport’s Don Riddell. “But we are a football team, we are football players and we are trying to do something that we know how to do – and that is play football.

“All the income we receive from the tickets and from the sponsors of these games we are sending to Ukraine for children, for people who are in a very difficult situation.

“Together with our president [do clube]Rinat Akhmetov — who is still helping Ukrainian citizens every day in different ways, medicines and everything else — we are now like a family and we are trying to do our best to help the citizens of Ukraine today in this difficult situation.”

Ahead of the tour’s opening game, a 1-0 loss to Greek giants Olympiacos, Shakhtar’s players wore shirts with the names of the places in Ukraine most affected by Russia’s attacks, including Mariupol and Irpin.

Since then, Shakhtar have played against Turkish clubs Fenerbahce and Antalyaspor and Poland’s Lechia Gdansk, and have a game against Croatia’s Hajduk Split scheduled for May 1.

There was a particularly emotional moment in the match against Gdansk earlier this month when Dmytro Keda, a 12-year-old Ukrainian refugee, came on as a last-minute substitute and scored the winning goal.

Keda, who fled his hometown of Mariupol, Ukraine after spending three weeks in hiding while Russian forces bombed the city, was surrounded by players from both teams and was erected in celebration.

Shakhtar coach Roberto De Zerbi explained after the match that the decision to let Keda in and score was “spontaneous”.

So far, Shakhtar says the tour has raised 8.2 million Ukrainian hryvnias (R$1,356,598), with about a quarter of the total already being transferred to Akhmetov’s foundation in Ukraine.

“When I asked Ukrainian players, ‘Are you ready to play, for example, every second game, every third game?’” Srna recalls. [jogamos]more money for the Ukrainians.’

“They replied: ‘Darijo, we are Ukrainians. We can do anything.’ And for me, that was a moment I will never forget.”

But this is the Ukrainian people. I arrived 19 years ago and they welcomed me as part of their family from day one and my family and I will never forget that. I lived more in Ukraine than in Croatia. Today I am Ukrainian and whatever we can do for them in these difficult times, we will do. Believe me.

“I am proud to have lived there, to have played there, to have known them because they are people with a huge heart, always positive. They didn’t attack anyone. They didn’t want to take an inch of another country’s land and they are heroes today. I am very proud of them and of myself personally, I will be with them until the end.”

Srna explains that the war was particularly difficult for the younger members of the Shaktar team to prosecute.

Among them is the former captain of a Mariupol club, who was invited to play with the team on their tour after “losing everything” during Russia’s continuous bombing of the city.

“First of all, it’s good that they are young,” says Srna. “Before them there is a long career and that can make them stronger. I will say one thing: the most beautiful period in Croatia was the 10 or 15 years after the war.

“I believe that Ukraine will be united until the end and after the war we will be together. We’ll drink together, we’ll smile together, we’ll cry together. The most important thing will be peace at this time.”

On Tuesday (26), the 2021-22 Ukrainian Premier League season was suspended due to the ongoing war. Shakhtar Donetsk and Dynamo Kyiv took first and second place on February 24 and will therefore qualify for next season’s Champions League.