On the front part of a T-shirt, there is the drawing of the country and the State Emblem. On the back, above the name of a player, there are the words of the greeting “Glory to Ukraine!”, and the collar bears the answer “Glory to Heroes!”
As it could be expected, some Russian officials got angry about the whole thing. Thus, Dmitri Sveshev, a legislator of the State Duma, called upon the UEFA to ban the uniform of a Ukrainian football player. And Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Office, said that “the Ukrainian football team has added the territory of Ukraine to the Russian Crimea on their T-shirts.”
Myron Markevych, the head of the committee for national teams at the Ukrainian Football Association (UFA) was quoted as saying, “First of all, I’d like to advise these so-called experts to better deal with doping scandals because of which the national teams of the Russian Federation are not allowed to perform under their national flag and the state anthem. As for their offensive remarks concerning the borders of Ukraine, they do not stand up to any criticism whatsoever. After all, it is Russians who have occupied our territory. And now they dare to say something and give us their recommendations.”
Markevych added, “I’m fully agree with UFA President Andriy Pavelko who, while presenting the new uniform, said that the image of Ukraine on the T-shirt would make our players even stronger because they know that they will represent the whole Ukraine from Simferopol and Sevastopol to Kyiv, from Donetsk and Luhansk to Uzhgorod.”
According to the latest reports, the UEFA has approved the new uniform of the Ukrainian national team for the 2020 European Football Championship which has been postponed until this June because of the coronavirus pandemic. Ukraine has been selected in the draw to play against the Netherlands, Austria and North Macedonia.
The newspaper Voice of Ukraine
