This is not a story about how a football tournament is taking hold of a country’s imagination for one glorious, fleeting summer against a dark backdrop of war. It is not a tale of how Ukraine’s participation at Euro 24 is providing people with “some light relief from the harsh realities of war”, as the cliche goes. It is not My Summer with Des, Ukrainian-style.
For it is impossible to escape from the horrors of war in Ukraine, to find relief in the football, because the war is in the very experience of following the football here: it’s in the walk to the game past anti-tank defences, sandbags, covered monuments, and boarded-up churches; it’s in the pre-match motivational messages from frontline fighters to the footballers; it’s in the air-raid warnings of rocket attacks flashing across the TV screen as you watch the game in the pub; it’s in the power cuts before kick-off. Euro 24 is not a convenient distraction from war in Ukraine, but yet another way to live it.
Andriy shows off his new national-team tracksuit, a gift from his mother before the Euros. Behind him stands a row of Czech hedgehogs, the anti-tank defences that block main roads around Odesa’s central station and Kulykove Pole Square (above). A group of friends, excited about the tournament, play keepie-uppie on Holy Trinity Day in front of the bombed Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral, a towering symbol of the war. The cathedral was badly damaged by a Russian rocket attack and now huge boards protect the windows from rocket blasts (below left). A football-styled car aerial sits above a damaged windshield on Derybasivska Street (below right).
On the morning of Ukraine’s first match, Valeria walks to art college with her hair dyed in the national colours. It’s important to make symbols of solidarity, she says. Behind her are defaced street signs, now so common across Ukraine, intentionally painted over as a defensive strategy to slow down and confuse Russian invaders (below).
A sign reading “Warning! Air Alarm! Odesa Region” flashes across the screen during television coverage of a game. This is a common, everyday experience of following the Euros in Ukraine.
The war is not a backdrop to anything. It is front and centre, while the football is peripheral. And yet, Euro 24 is still visible. It is present on city streets and on beaches, in parks and bars and restaurants. And while there is no “Euros fever gripping the nation”, as we like to say in England, the football, although quiet and marginal and modest in comparison to the war, is subtly and unsurely starting to matter.
Alexey and Sergey play football in the Black Sea, and are enthusiastic about Ukraine’s chances. Odesa’s beaches are currently very busy and crowded on weekends, having reopened for swimming and bathing (and football) last summer after the threat level of mines was severely reduced.
A boy wearing an Mbappé No 10 France shirt takes a break from selling Ukrainian flags on the day of Ukraine’s second match of the tournament. Andin, on holiday in Odesa from Mykolaiv stands in front of a wall of war-art, a backdrop of visual responses to the conflict with Russia that satirises and mocks Russia’s military aggression.
Dima (right) coaches a training session for the Odesa youth team in the south of the city. He says the war has negatively affected the quality of Ukrainian youth football, with so many talented players now living and playing in western Europe after fleeing the country as refugees. He enjoys the Euros, but says the war makes it hard to watch.
And yet, for the football to matter it needs to be watched and the war threatens this most crucial element of a summer tournament. Russia is launching a massive attack on the Ukrainian power grid, limiting the country’s energy resources. As a result, power is rationed by the government, with energy-saving power cuts made each day. Power, and potentially the football, is down for up to 10 hours a day.
In Germany during the Euros, thousands of screens at train stations and shopping centres are showing every goal from every game within three minutes of them going in, meaning you’ll never miss a thing. In Ukraine, screens are likely to cut out (along with every other electrical device) at any moment during any match, meaning you’ll miss an awful lot. The whirring, bouncy-castle hum of electricity generators then becomes the soundtrack to Euro 2024, as businesses, including bars and restaurants wanting to show the football, plug in for power.
Ilya makes a note of the time as he turns on the electricity generator outside his business.
The Euros in Ukraine is a light scattering of noticeable signs and images – beer ads, the odd football shirt, a window dressing – across a much thicker militaristic and war-themed landscape of visual messaging. The pervasiveness of official visual communication about the war is on a par with the UK government’s Covid-19 messaging during spring 2020, if that’s not too distant a memory. That’s a dense discourse to cut through. And yet, at times, the visual signifiers of the war and the football in Ukraine co-exist and combine with each other, intertwine and collide.
An International Legion fighter, ‘Buddha’, recently back from service in Slovyansk, stops in front of a giant Euro 2024 image of Ronaldo. Passers-by shake his hand and thank him. He shows the ‘Glory to Ukraine’ tattoo on his biceps and talks about his experiences.
A soldier leans on a rare Euro 2024-themed advert. Hundreds of billboards line the streets of Odesa, bringing a vast amount of visual messaging and signage to the city. Very little of it, however, is about the football, with the war occupying almost all image space (above). A citizen is framed between football and war, while walking between two signs, one a notification that the billiards hall will be showing Euro 2024 with foreign translations, the other a poster to commemorate the Day of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (below).
The morning of Ukraine’s final group match begins with explosions in the sky, as the city’s air defences come into operation. During Ukraine’s first game, 3-0 down to Romania with no hope of a comeback, when it seemed as bad as it could get, the signal cuts out, the screens freeze, and all that remains is the spinning wheel of death. Some said it was probably Russia’s doing, while others joked it would have been crueller to have left it on.
Supporters stand for the Ukrainian national anthem.
People gather outside a small bar, pulling chairs and tables together to form a row of nervous supporters.
Ann looks on in anticipation of kick-off for the game agains Romania, wrapped in the Ukrainian flag. She’s written ‘KHERSON’ in huge letters across it, the name of her home city, east of Odesa, from which she fled when Russia invaded.
There is a sense from being in Ukraine during Euro 24 that the game matters to Ukrainians more during the war, with victory and defeat in football fed into larger narratives of national triumph and suffering, perseverance and unity. And yet, there is also a sense that it doesn’t matter one jot, that it is totally meaningless and insignificant, and that Bill Shankly’s famous phrase about football being more important than life and death is utter nonsense. War, it seems, in its blurring of reality, in its breakdown of solid, black and white interpretations, allows both things to be true at once.