The smallness of football in the shadows of conflict.

To my modern mind, the idea of war is perhaps almost too big to truly, fully comprehend, especially when the theatre of that conflict is one imaginatively familiar to us, certainly one more familiar than other equally war torn, yet further flung, and tragic corners of the globe where war and violence seem interminable.

This is where we come full circle, because that familiarity, such that it is, is one, for me at least, founded almost entirely on football alone: in the shape of Dynamo Kyiv versus Arsenal! 

In happier times, it seemed no winter was complete without a thankless, and usually fruitless, journey to Kyiv to play the mighty Dynamo in the Champions League. Defeats which now pale into such an overwhelming insignificance. 

As a child following football in the seventies, Dynamo were one of a clutch of romantically and exotically sounding teams I dreamed about Arsenal playing in the heady context of European club football.

In 1965 they were the first Soviet club to enter European competitions, and in addition to a host of Soviet and Ukrainian titles they twice won the old European Cup Winners’ Cup, the first of which, in 1975, they augmented by triumphing against Bayern Munich to win the European Super Cup as well. Two years later they reached the semi-finals of the European Cup, and twice since then have they been close to glory again, reaching the semi-finals of the Champions League. 

That great Dynamo team of the mid-seventies was one built around the prodigious goal scoring feats of Oleh Blokhin, which in 1975, the year of Dynamo’s first European success, secured Blokhin a much-merited Ballon d’Or. Black and white images of Blokhin in a Soviet shirt with ‘CCCP’ adorning its front would still be one of the first images to come my mind at the mere mention of ‘football behind the Iron Curtain’. 

A more familiar Dynamo star to modern Arsenal eyes will be Andriy Shevchenko, another Ukrainian to be recognised as one of the World’s all-time greats with a Ballon d’Or in 2004, becoming his country’s third winner of the award after Blokhin, and Igor Belanov in 1986. 

We saw at first hand just how good a youthful Shevchenko looked, in tandem with Rebrov in 1998. A last-minute equaliser from Rebrov at Wembley gave Dynamo a draw, and back in Ukraine goals from Rebrov, Golovko, and Shevchenko had seen the hosts force a three-goal advantage, with Stephen Hughes getting a consolation goal in the 3-1 defeat. 

Playing in those two games for Dynamo was a power house at right-back, Oleh Luzhnyi, who would impress Wenger sufficiently for Arsenal’s boss to sign the defender who would go on to stay at Highbury for four seasons and make 75 appearances.

Luzhnyi is back at Dynamo as assistant manager these days, and the poignant news has recently emerged that, perhaps as to be expected of a man who captained his country, Ukraine, in 37 appearances, he has taken up arms to defend his homeland. It is not just because of his connection to Arsenal that we wish him well – although that enduring connection makes it all seem the more human and more tragic somehow. 

At the age 56 you would think that the world no longer had the capacity to surprise or shock one, but recent events have overturned this assumption.

Perhaps in a break in the shelling and the fighting, a group of children will gather and kick a ball about, dreaming of one day pulling on a Dynamo Kyiv shirt. I share their dream.

Win, lose, or draw I hope one day Arsenal journey once again back to the city of Kyiv and play a simple game of football after which men, women, and children go home, back to ordinary lives. 

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If you are an Arsenal supporter from Ukraine please get in touch with the Gooner, we would like to talk you for a future piece.