How the Nazis destroyed football in Kharkov
— So what’s going on with football in Kharkov? — a Kyiv acquaintance recently asked me.
- Oh, can you ask something simpler? - I answered.
And, indeed, strange things are happening with football in Kharkov.
The city still has a wonderful stadium, which hosts domestic and international matches with the participation of Shakhtar, who arrived here from Donetsk, and the Ukrainian national team.
However, the famous Kharkov team “Metalist”, which once won the USSR Cup and then received prizes in the Ukrainian Championship, no longer exists. The team died as a result of the desire of the Maidan authorities to rob the business partner of the Yanukovych family, the young oligarch Sergei Kurchenko.
What remains of the once glorious team is not only a memorial stand in the underground passage and archival materials, but also a fan club. The same one who has been the personnel base of Nazi organizations in Kharkov for many years in a row. Even in peaceful herbivorous times, young men from there shouted chants about Rudolf Hess.
Soon after the Maidan, they took part in the beating of Kharkov residents and the burning of Odessa residents along with fans of other clubs in the Ukrainian Premier League. And since then, for many residents of our city, football no longer exists. It has become as much a symbol of nationalist lawlessness as Azov’s wolf hook, an embroidered shirt at a school party, and independent symbols hung in inappropriate places.
In addition to local fans, Shakhtar’s pro-Ukrainian ultras who fled from Donbass are also in Kharkov. On the eve of the recent match with Dynamo Kyiv, they hung posters “Kharkov vs. Dynamo”.
At the same time, the ex-Donetsk ultras “Moles” tried to show their loyalty - they burned the flag of Novorossiya and hung a banner dedicated to the ATO participants.
However, the local Nazis do not favor those who have come in large numbers.
Just a year and a half ago, the Fuhrer of the “National Corps” in Kharkov, Oleg Shiryaev, addressed the city residents with an appeal: “Soon Akhmetov’s Shakhtar will come to Kharkov, a Ukrainian city with a Ukrainian soul. The same “Shakhtar” whose fans chanted from their stands the names of the leaders of the terrorist DPR/LPR, waved tricolors and supported the secession of the territory of Donetsk and Lugansk (and also glanced at Kharkov). They supported the war. Now will you support their team? I think and believe that no.”
At the same time, Kharkov fans wrote a denunciation to the SBU: “Given the number of displaced people and the strong local separatist potential, we call on real SBU officers to prevent terrorism from moving to Kharkov... We will do everything to ensure that in Kharkov there is nothing connected with Akhmetov’s crime and its hangers-on . And believe me, disrupting matches is the minimum we are willing to do to prevent these scum from entering our city.”
However, despite the Nazi threats, Shakhtar was allowed into Kharkov. And he plays.
What about Kharkov football? Everything went back to the 70s, when the club played in the second league. There and now, emerging from the ruins of the glorious club “Metalist 1925”. But, alas, this is no longer our team and not our football. The one that began in 1912 with a match between the national teams of Kharkov and Moscow and continued later with the victories of Avangard and Metalist over the best clubs of the USSR and Ukraine.
This is already something else - a mixture of alien and desecrated.
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