‘We’re not afraid’: Ukraine side FC Kryvbas ignore nearby shells as new season looms

On a slight incline overlooking FC Kryvbas’s training facilities, the skeletal frame of a mining tower sets slowly into action. Its wheels turn intermittently, deliberately, helping drag a city’s lifeblood closer to the fresh air. Down by the gates an elderly man materialises from a side path at the first sign of visitors, hawking a plastic bag half-full of cherries. They are in season, glistening and juicy; there will be plenty more where those came from, should the volume of sales match his optimism.

Inside, Yuriy Vernydub has work of his own. He jokes that the last year of his life would make a film script but the immediate reality is, true to his oeuvre, about the next game. There is a competitive match to prepare for: Kryvbas will face Kolos Kovalivka near Kyiv on Tuesday, the first day of the 2022-23 Ukrainian Premier League season.

Soon the heavens will open. While thunder and lightning compete for attention overhead his players will be sent out of their indoor dome and on to the grass pitch so they can perfect their off-the-ball shape. They are 40km from the Russian frontline; overnight there have been barrel bombings to the south, and these weather conditions are water off a footballer’s back.

“Of course I have some fears about starting the league now, any smart person would,” Vernydub says. “It’s probably the first time in history that a championship will be played during the middle of a war. But I’ve seen real shelling with my own eyes, so I’m less scared.”

This is Kryvyi Rih: the sprawling, snaking city that dominates central Ukraine’s industrial heartland. Its people are tough, plain-speaking, more than half of them working in the metallurgy industry whose edifices dominate every stretch of the landscape.

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