Bombed and Turned Into Barracks Amid Ukraine-Russia Tensions, Soccer Club Revived Half a World Away In Brazil

Although, not as much, soccer is also affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Due to bombings, one club in particular named FC Mariupol disappeared from the circuit as the city it represented turned to rubles. The club is now being revived on the other side of the world.

The team attempted a comeback last year, but then the city got bombed. Furthermore, the training facility turned into a Russian camp. The team disbanded, and their inclusion from the schedule was in question as the season resumed. Mariupol’s 19,000-capacity stadium got abandoned. But a glimmer of hope is now on the horizon.

Ukrainian club finds a new home

Amid all the chaos, the vice president of FC Mariupol, a couple of days back, made a hopeful announcement. In a talk with CNN, Andriy Sanin laid out the planning is underway for the revival of the club. Although the club is hoping to play in their former home one day, for now, the home of soccer, Brazil would work.

Sannin said, “When we don’t play, people forget about us. And this was very disturbing for us. We started looking for ideas on how to make people keep talking about us. The first country that comes to mind when you think about football is, of course, Brazil. We found a whole province that is almost 80% ethnic Ukrainian, and we found a football club.”

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He revealed that they found a region with Ukrainian ethnicity in the majority. The area is Prudentópolis in southern Brazil and they have a soccer team playing in the region. Associação Atlética Batel plays in the third tier of Brazilian soccer. For the next six months at least the club has changed its name to FC Mariupol and will play in the Ukrainian club’s signature orange kit.

The effect of the Russia-Ukraine war has had an immense effect on the soccer world.

The effect of war on soccer clubs

The Russian invasion has been cruel to all sectors of the county, from sports to movies, and from market to social. Everything got disrupted due to the raging war. Soccer isn’t far from this scenario. Although the games and league still go on, multiple teams have experienced setbacks that affected their functioning. The most popular example of this would be the ownership change that occurred to Premier League team Chelsea.

The Premier League forcibly disqualified Russian owner Roman Abramovich from his post as the director of Chelsea and forced a change in ownership. The first signs of the ownership change haven’t been kind to the English team as they languish at 11 in the standings contrary to the expectations at the beginning of the season.

Nevertheless, the effect of the war has had an effect on a number of soccer clubs. What do you make of Ukranian club finding a home in Brazil? Let us know in the comments section below.

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