Vyacheslav Surkis: "Children from Shakhtar Academy continuously insulted me, my father, my whole family"

The goalkeeper of Dynamo Kyiv youth team Vyacheslav Surkis told about the scandalous events that accompanied the recent match of his team against Shakhtar U-19 Donetsk (2:1) in the youth championship of Ukraine.

"At first everything was good. But then, in the second half, there followed an unfair, in my opinion, suspension of Zakharchenko for a foul on Kremchanin. After that, not so much Shakhtar fans started shouting from the stands, but children from the club's Academy, who are 13-15 years old.

Such people should have no place in football. They started insulting me, my father, my whole family, as well as Dynamo players and our club itself. It happened continuously after we scored the second goal. This was the first time in my career, nothing like this had happened during the previous matches against Shakhtar.

And after the match, the same children from Shakhtar Academy wrote insulting messages to me on Instagram.

Shouting at Shakhtar during the match from the Dynamo stands? Yes, they were, but already after such behaviour started to be directed at us. And when we played against Shakhtar in the first round at our base, nobody allowed themselves to shout anything offensive against our rival. There were also a lot of people at that game and there were children from our Academy. At our matches, security is very seriously controlled and something like what I described above is simply not allowed to happen.

The events that took place after the final whistle. I remember them all very well. I myself ran up to the Shakhtar fans and showed like this (put both hands to my ears with open palms - editor's note). It meant that I was ready to listen to them, if they had something to say to me. Therefore, it is not true that I ran up to the Shakhtar reserve bench. But the entire Pitmen's bench ran onto the pitch at that moment. A huge crowd of fans was also there. One of them tried to hit me. I was lucky, I managed to dodge. Then our players ran up, took me aside and calmed me down. I think I did the right thing in that moment, not answering the attacker. But if something like that had happened somewhere on the street, my reaction and response would have been quite different.

The Simeone-style gestures on my part that I am accused of? It didn't happen. And my team-mates also told me afterwards that I didn't show anything like that. The only thing I showed to the stands was my palms open near my ears, and the only thing I shouted was "I'm listening to you!".

Then we gathered as a team, accepted congratulations on the victory from Dynamo president Igor Surkis, thanked our fans for their support and went to celebrate our success," Surkis said on the air of the YouTube channel TaToTake.