In Ukraine, a football match lasts almost five hours because of air attack alerts – Libération

War between Ukraine and RussiafileThe Ukrainian Premier-Liha meeting between clubs Dnipro-1 and Oleksandria took almost 280 minutes to finish on Monday evening due to multiple interruptions for air attack alerts. A national record.

1-0 after… 280 minutes. The Dnipro club won the longest football match in the history of the Ukrainian championship against Oleksandria on Monday, November 6 evening. A meeting lasting almost five interminable hours, caused by several interruptions for alerts of an air attack in this country still mired in a conflict with Russia.

ICYMI

Here’s the sole goal from Dnipro-1 v Oleksandriya yesterday which is officially the longest UPL game in history

As a result of 4 air raid delays – it finished over 4 & 1/2 hours after OG KO time

Similarly a VAR decision took 1 hour to complete pic.twitter.com/OKiDAtuGwb

— Zorya Londonsk (@ZoryaLondonsk) November 7, 2023

The meeting took place in Dnipro, a large city in the center-east which has not been spared by Russian strikes since the start of the war, in February 2022. The kick-off was given at 5 p.m. local time, but the players of Dnipro-1 and Oleksandria were only able to finally reach their locker rooms a little before 10 p.m., after “almost 280 minutes”, noted the first of the two clubs on X (ex-Twitter).

“I wanted to finish the match”

The first division championship was suspended at the start of the war, but has since resumed matches. Under the cover of respecting draconian measures: the matches are played without spectators for security reasons, and must in particular be suspended in the event of an air alert. In this case, these sirens, a now usual sound for a large part of Ukrainians, sounded “several times” during Monday’s game, which “could still be finished”, explains the Ukrainian Football Federation (UAF) on its site. Some alerts remained in effect for more than an hour, according to the specialist site sport.ua.

One of his players, Eduard Sarapiy, said it was the first meeting “this long” for his team. “I wanted to finish the match,” he said in an interview published on the Dnipro-1 website.

The conflict had a devastating effect on Ukrainian clubs. Some can no longer play in their hometown, which is too dangerous, others have seen their stadium hit by strikes. Shakhtar Donetsk, for example, will play its European matches this season in Hamburg, Germany, after having been hosted for a time in Warsaw. Players have also lost loved ones. In September, the brother of Dmitro Riznyk, goalkeeper of Shakhtar Donetsk, died after a mine explosion.