"Cesc Fabregas wheeled away to celebrate a penalty shootout winner that sent Spain into the Euro 2012 final at Portugal's expense to the symphony of ecstatic football fans in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. Two years later, that sound was replaced with bombardment, gunfire and explosions. Almost 50,000 people inside the impressive Donbas Arena that night, watching stars like Andres Iniesta and Cristiano Ronaldo,"
"Once a symbol of footballing hope, the home of Shakhtar Donetsk has sat abandoned in occupied territory since 2017, structurally damaged by shelling. Once the football club was forced to move more than 700 miles west to Lviv in 2014, the stadium was turned into a humanitarian aid centre, but after three years even that became unsustainable due to the unrest in the region amid tensions with Russia."
"Shaktar's final match in the stadium, which once staged grand Champions League affairs with Barcelona and Real Madrid, was on 2 May 2014, a 3-1 win over Mariupol, a football club that no longer exists from a city that barely exists following the 2022 escalation and full-scale Russian invasion. And yet football endures in Ukraine, albeit no further east than Kryvyi Rih, which lies around 40 miles from the nearest Russian stronghold in the country, and in front of largely empty arenas."
Cesc Fabregas's penalty celebration in Donetsk during Euro 2012 contrasts with later bombardment, gunfire and explosions that transformed the city. The Donbas Arena held almost 50,000 spectators watching world stars before becoming derelict, structurally damaged by shelling with weeds and shattered glass. Shakhtar Donetsk relocated more than 700 miles west to Lviv in 2014, and the stadium briefly served as a humanitarian aid centre until unrest made that unsustainable. Shakhtar's final match in the arena was on 2 May 2014. Football continues in Ukraine in western cities like Kryvyi Rih, often in largely empty stadiums amid occasional air raid alerts.
Read at www.bbc.com
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