Grim reality of war sends Shakhtar Donetsk to London for ‘home’ Champions League clash

The morning has thinned out into low, wispy cloud. Beneath it, Shakhtar Donetsk’s players are going through their paces. Arda Turan observes from the side, watching with the director of football, Darijo Srna. A stray ball zips towards them and Srna, after juggling it up, bends it into the goal with a familiar right-footed arc. “Modric!” exclaims Turan. But the two men are football legends in their own right and, as they continue to joke, the thought occurs that this happy scene could be played out almost anywhere else. Nearby, just beyond the team’s accommodation, a lake shimmers under the emerging sun.

It masks the fact that, around dawn, air-raid sirens disrupted the peace for everyone in view. Even here, in Shakhtar’s bucolic spa hotel base 15 minutes outside Lviv, nobody is safe from the threat of Russian rockets and drones. In Rivne, three hours’ drive to the northeast, another alarm had sent the players and staff down to the stadium’s shelter. The second half was delayed by 20 minutes and that, no matter the corner of the country or the vividness of the autumn colours, is a weekly reality.