Andrei Nedelin: “Suspending the championship for an indefinite period is plunging our football into another abyss of chaos”

Andrey Nedelin, Executive Director of Metalist 1925, on the situation with the match of the 7th round of the Ukrainian Championship with Lviv.

“It is rather difficult to say unequivocally that this match will take place and, if so, where exactly.

For obvious reasons, the game against Oleksandriya has been postponed to a later date. But there is a difficult test ahead, because our team has two home matches in a row - on Saturday and Wednesday.

Making predictions is a thankless task. We hope for a miracle, but we are looking for options ourselves. Kyiv is definitely "closed" for the next week. The only option left is to urgently look for an alternative. Will it be the west of the country, or will the matches have to be postponed until later... There are still more questions than answers.

The military-civilian administrations of the country, the Football Association of Ukraine and the Premier League are working in close contact with the clubs. Various options are being worked out. In the next 24-36 hours, clarity should come. All UPL participants are united in one thing: to suspend the championship for an indefinite period is to plunge our football into another abyss of chaos and uncertainty.

The option to finish the game abroad is practically unrealizable in such a short time, financially most clubs will not be able to afford it, plus the ban on gambling business advertising in Eastern Europe and Turkey devalues ​​the contracts of clubs with technical and title sponsors to zero. Which is essentially equivalent to a series of bankruptcies and liquidations.

Escalation on the military track was not ruled out even in the summer during organizational preparations for the season. No one was naive, everyone understood who we were dealing with and that sooner or later this could happen. Today, crisis management skills come to the fore. Including, by searching for more or less reasonable options for overcoming the dark time in the current season.

Patriotism, faith in the armed forces of Ukraine and readiness for self-sacrifice in a certain sense must now prevail over the desire to become like a flock of ostriches who want to hide their heads deeper in the sand.

Before the start of the championship, we knew all the risks, we understood that football should not die, that it is the only outlet for thousands of fans across the country. It is difficult to surprise us, our will cannot be broken.

It remains to survive the rocket convulsions of the aggressor, raging from helplessness in the military component and resorting to the most shameful method of warfare - terror against civilians and critical infrastructure," Nedelin wrote on his Facebook page.