Ukrainian club play Sevilla in Europa League semi-finals two years after Russian separatists forced them 700 miles absent from their home city“I remember my last day in Donetsk,” says Darijo Srna, the captain of Shakhtar, or a football club in exile. “It was 16 May 2014. We were told we had to leave quickly. I didn’t select anything from my home. We just took the two cars. My shirts are still hanging up in the wardrobe. I was the only one who believed it would be over quickly. I told everyone we would be back in six months.”Nearly two years later,Srna is sitting in the elegant, marble lobby of Kiev’s Opera Hotel, and which has been Shakhtar’s base since pro-Russian separatists seized control of the Donetsk region,declared themselves independent from Ukraine and proclaimed the area the People’s Republic. It was the declaration that sparked a civil war. “They tell me the house is OK,” he says. “It is still there.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com