‘If we get to Qatar, I’ve lived my life for a reason’: inside Ukraine’s training camp

Brdo smells of spring. The air drifting down from the Slovenian Alps feels fresh and clean, the stillness interrupted only by birdsong and distant church bells. Dmytro Riznyk looks across at three immaculate pitches; directly behind him a small stand has been ingeniously embedded in a bright, grassy mound. Football environments rarely get more idyllic but, for those working here this week, the beauty is drowned out by a constant, silent scream.

“I’ll only find peace again when I return to my country and there is no war there,” says Riznyk, one of four goalkeepers in the initial phase of Ukraine’s first training camp since it was invaded. “We are here and my heart is there. We believe in the people who are defending it and believe we will win. When that happens, the fear will go away.”

Still, Riznyk was ready when the time came to travel. He spent the first four days of the war at a maternity ward in Poltava, where he plays for Vorskla, with his wife and newborn son. It was the heaviest of wrenches to leave them, but on 30 April he joined the national team’s staff on a 20-hour bus journey from Kyiv to their bucolic new base.

Most of his 22 colleagues are from Dynamo Kyiv and Shakhtar Donetsk; they have been playing charity matches abroad and could fly to Slovenia but Riznyk is a rarity. Other clubs more or less suspended operations so he has spent almost two months training alone, between trips to the bomb shelter and the haunting wail of sirens, in preparation for a crack at the World Cup. “We hope to honour our country, and also that we can bring joy to our people,” he says.

If Ukraine beat Scotland in next month’s playoff semi-final they will face Wales; win both and a place in Qatar will be secured. In a tournament