Brazilian football club will play under the name FC Mariupol to revive the spirit of the destroyed city
At the request of their Ukrainian counterparts, they will wear orange shirts and the symbols of the Mariupol club
A disbanded football team from Mariupol will be revived in southern Brazil. More than a year ago, the Mariupol football club disappeared – the entire city was destroyed by Russian artillery and bombers.
On March 19, 2022, the team was supposed to meet FC Kollos at the Volodymyr Boyko Stadium in a Ukrainian Premier League game. But by then, the training base and the 12,000-seat stadium had been bombed. The FC Mariupol team disbanded.
But there was still hope.
The club's vice president, Andriy Sanin, told CNN: "When we don't play, people forget about us. And this worries us a lot. We started looking for ideas on how to make people remember us."
"The first country that comes to mind when you think of soccer is, of course, Brazil. We found a whole province that is almost 80% Ukrainian, and we found a football club in it," says Sanin.
The region in the south of Brazil is called Prudentopolis, and a large number of residents here are of Ukrainian descent. The city of Guarapuava boasts the largest Ukrainian community in South America. 75% of its 52,000 residents are of Ukrainian descent.
It also has its own football club, Associação Atlética Batel.
This is not a very powerful center of Brazilian football, as the team plays in the third division of the Paraná state league. But Batel suddenly has international supporters. For the next six games, and possibly beyond, the club will change its name to FC Mariupol, wearing the orange shirts of the Ukrainian side, as well as the coat of arms and logo.
"This gives us hope that if the club has not died, the city will not die either, which means it will be reborn," Sanin says.
"Ukrainian Mariupol will be revived just like the Ukrainian football club Mariupol," he told CNN.
In Brazil, Alex Lopes, president of Batel, said: "Our club and our region have a lot in common with the Ukrainian people. Our goal is to help preserve FC Mariupol, which was the pride of the city, until they can return to the game."
The newly created FCMariupolLives website states: "Ukraine has always opened the gates of Europe for Brazilians. Now it's time for Brazil to accept Ukrainians and save FC Mariupol".
Sanin says it is impossible to express how much Batel's gesture means to the Ukrainian club. He admitted that the video created by the players in Prudentopolis wearing FC Mariupol uniforms brought him to tears.
The website created by the club reads: "We will take care of FC Mariupol until all Ukrainians can once again go to the Volodymyr Boyko Stadium to watch their home team play."
"I really hope that later, after the war, we will definitely meet with the guys from the Brazilian club. We will invite them to Mariupol, to the Sea of Azov," Sanin said.
Background. As reported, the Ukrainian national football team will continue to participate in the Euro 2024 qualifiers despite the participation of the Belarusian national team.
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