“You have to treat the physical and emotional pain of war”

So it was august and the Ukrainian government had just announced the return of the National Football League to the country after a half-year hiatus. The goal was to send a signal of resistance. Make this sport for the masses a loudspeaker to shout to the world the atrocities that Russia was committing on its territory and, above all, trying to “lift the nation’s spirits”. Give citizens a little hope, some sense of normalcy.

The first thing that Daniel thought when he saw the holed wall in the room that was going to be his workplace had nothing to do with any of that. “What the hell am I doing here?”, he asked himself. After working for a while in Tanzania, this 34-year-old from the Canary Islands was offered to be the physical trainer of the Ukrainian team that is now coached by the former Croatian soccer player Igor Jovićević. Daniel did not hesitate: “I said yes before knowing what the financial offer was.”

He Shakhtar Donetsk –originating from the city of the same name in the Donbas region– is one of the country’s teams with the longest history, despite the fact that since 2014, when Russia occupied the eastern region of Ukraine, does not play in its own stadium. However, being a nomadic team is a hindrance that has not prevented it from being a regular at the Champions League and the Europa League, two of the most important competitions in the world. “Playing at that level is an opportunity that we may never have again in our lifetime,” says Daniel.

If he speaks in the plural, it is because Curro came with him, a classmate from the university and the current goalkeeper coach of the team. Like the canary, Curro speaks of “the doors that open” when working at Shakhtar Donetsk, even though that has meant spending the last eight months away from his native Huelva and in a territory at war. “At first I didn’t want to enter Ukraine, but then I understood that if they proposed it, it was because there was a minimum of security,” he explains. And it is that end up living in kyiv, he clarifies, not part of the original plan.

[Ucranianos que vuelven a Borodyanka, Bucha e Irpin, la ruta del horror: “Sólo sé que quiero vivir aquí”]

“At first they told us that we would live in Poland [a donde se trasladó el equipo cuando empezó la guerra] and? the League would be played outside the country. Then, that we would play in the Ukraine, near the border. And when we were in preseason they told us that the first two games would be played in the capital”, sums up Daniel. Now, except for those on the front line, they have already set foot in practically all the large Ukrainian stadiums: from Kharkov (in the northeast) to Odessa (in the southwest) passing through Oleksandria and kyiv (in the middle).

When we meet Daniel and Curro on the terrace of a cafeteria located a few meters from the hotel where they are staying –in the center of the Ukrainian capital and in an apparently militarized area– they have just arrived, after more than seven hours by busof Lviv, a city about 70 kilometers from the border with Poland where they lived the first months of the season. With them is the man from Madrid Javier Luruena, the third Spanish coach of Shakhtar Donetsk. Also a physical trainer, he joined the coaching staff in januarywith the League already underway and knowing that its days would pass within the Ukrainian borders. “I already came without deceit”joke.

From 90 to 240 game minutes

The normal atmosphere that has been breathed in the streets of Kiev for months, with improvised concerts in the street, and the hustle and bustle typical of any European capital subjected, yes, to an undaunted curfew, helped them relativize his first scare: when they first heard the air raid alarm.

The sound, they say, accompanied them especially during the first games, when they had to hold on to the established protocol. “If the siren sounds we have to go to the changing rooms, which are usually underground, and wait for it to finish. If it doesn’t last long, you warm up and roll again, but if it lasts, both teams have to decide if it continues playing or is suspended”, details Daniel.

[Igor Belanov, de robar el Balón de Oro a Maradona en el 86 a defender Ucrania de la invasión rusa]

One of those games lasted almost 240 minutes, “to which we must later add seven or eight hours by bus back, on your rest day, because you can’t go by plane like the rest of the professional teams do”, recalls Javier.

The dynamics of football in times of war wears out, consumes. The matches are also held behind closed doors, leaving the athletes without the warmth and encouragement of the fans. And that is perhaps the biggest challenge these three coaches face: preparing the players to adapt and do your best in conditions that are out of the ordinary.

“Some live with the pressure that if they lose or are kicked out of the team they may have to go to the front soon”

Almost in its entirety, the Shakhtar Donetsk squad is now a Ukrainian national, since the war caused the disbandment of the numerous young Brazilian promises that had made up the club for years. billionaire property Rinat Akhmetov, which also owns the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, the team is not immune to the economic disruptions resulting from the conflict. The best players have gone abroad, and those who remain strive to escape (and even enjoy) in the field while friends, acquaintances and family risk their lives on the front line.

Some of the players, explain the coaches, have their parents in occupied areas or in the territories that Russia bombs daily. Others have not seen their partners or their children for months, refugees abroad. One of them even received the notification to enlist in the ranks of the Ukrainian army. “He lives with the pressure that if he loses, or if he gets kicked off the team, he might have to go up front soon.”

“That’s why we try not only to manage physical pain, but also the emotional fatigue generated by war“, says Javier. To achieve this, they focus on understanding the individual situation of each one and talking to them when they see that they need it. “In the end, being here is our choice, but many of them have no other alternative and have to maintain to their families, some many kilometers away”, says the Madrid coach.

One more year at Shakhtar Donetsk

Yours, the families of Javier, Curro and Daniel, they are also far away, and that, they say, is what weighs the most on them. Since they arrived in Ukraine they have only returned to Spain twice: in November and in March. Visits are neither expected nor desired. In addition, they acknowledge, the information they give is meticulously measured: they do not notify “not even half” of the times that the anti-aircraft alarm sounds in Kiev, which, after months of relative calm, has become a constant in recent weeks.

Last winter they also did not report the Russian missile that hit the energy infrastructure in Lviv and did rattle the hotel windows in which they were. They fell silent when they watched, “like fireworks”, the efforts of the Ukrainian anti-aircraft defenses to shoot down the uncontrolled drone that flew over the Maidan square in early May. All “not to worry anymore“to your loved ones.

In the end, of the eight months they have been in Ukraine, they have only felt fear “two days at the most”. “I know it’s shocking, because my friends in Spain don’t believe that people in kyiv are leading a normal life or that we are here having a coffee on a terrace,” says Curro.

In a couple of weeks, when the season is over, the three of them will be coming home, away from the noise of the air-raid alarms and, perhaps, with a drink under his arm. Today, their team leads the Ukrainian League and they are confident that they will win. And about whether they compensate for those days of uncertainty typical of the day-to-day life of a country at war, the three agree that football is unpredictable, but that, for the moment, they have signed one more year with Shakhtar Donetsk.