Andriy Yarmolenko sank to his knees, arms out, less in celebration it seemed than in exhaustion. His teammates surrounded him, their reaction less of joy than of something more profound. When the Ukrainian got to his feet, his mouth was tight as he tried to fight back the tears. In the end he could not and, as he walked back to his own half to restart the game, he wept openly. Even Aston Villa’s players applauded. Football can be a horrible sport, its ownership model perhaps addled beyond repair, but there are still times when it can provide moments of enormous poignancy and perhaps more.
“Goal for West Ham and Ukraine,” boomed the stadium announcer, “Andriy Yarmolenko.” Was that overdoing it? Perhaps. But the bombast matched the mood. This was a goal that set West Ham on the way to their second win in seven games, and that kept West Ham dreaming of Champions League qualification. But it felt a lot more important than that.
What by the end of the season will probably appear a mid-table clash is nothing but an irrelevance in the wider context, but perhaps somewhere, in some bunker in Mariupol, a shattered apartment block in Kyiv, or in Yarmolenko’s home city of Chernihiv in the north of Ukraine, somebody will hear that Yarmolenko scored and be transported, at least momentarily, from the horror.
And perhaps they will hear of the roar that greeted Yarmolenko’s arrival as a 52nd-minute substitute for Michail Antonio, or of the scenes that followed his goal, and know that their plight is remembered, that the sympathy of a large part of the world is with them. It is only a symbol, but it is something.
The sense with West Ham recently has been of weariness, as they went out of the FA Cup to Southampton and lost the first leg of their Europa League tie at Sevilla. Antonio, in particular, has looked short of his usual zip. This was his 27th league start of the season but he has not scored in the league since New Year’s Day.
West Ham have a long-standing habit of wasting money on centre-forwards but the failure to bring in support for him in January may be what ends up costing them Champions League football next season. There was one dart from the Jamaica striker after 33 minutes that brought a corner, but his involvement was spasmodic even before he went down with what appeared to be a groin problem.
This was a game littered with injuries. Villa’s Lucas Digne hobbled off after 10 minutes and Aaron Cresswell followed Antonio. With Jarrod Bowen also out, West Ham are running short of attacking options. Yarmolenko may have a major role to play in the coming weeks. He took his goal well, seizing on Saïd Benrahma’s pass before deftly clipping his shot past Emi Martínez with the outside of his foot with 20 minutes remaining.
“Saïd gave me the ball. In the box,” said Yarmolenko. “You don’t have a lot of time and you need to do everything really quick and I was quick enough.” Benrahma laid on the second for Pablo Fornals to cap a neat counter 12 minutes later.
What was odd was how Villa, despite having won their previous three games, seemed happy to let the game drift. There were moments of low-key time-wasting and a lot of sideways passes. For a long time this was a very flat affair, although it did liven up around the hour mark as Danny Ings had a shot pushed against the post and then Craig Dawson headed over the bar from close range after Martínez had made a remarkable block from a Kurt Zouma header.
As well as advancing two rounds in the FA Cup, West Ham reached the quarter-finals of the League Cup and are in the last 16 of the Europa League. If fatigue is beginning to take its toll, it’s perhaps no great surprise. Just because West Ham won, nobody should think that issue has gone away. This was a tired performance, and the suspicion was that if Villa had gone at West Ham earlier as they belatedly did having fallen behind, they might have caused them problems. As it was, Jacob Ramsey’s 90th-minute goal was enough only to cause West Ham an anxious six minutes of injury time.
The three points may prove important come the end of the season, but really the sense here was that what mattered was far less the result or any specifics, than the warmth that was shown to Yarmolenko. “For me, it is really important to feel the support from the manager and my team-mates and the fans. When I feel it, I give everything for the fans and the club.” As the rockets fall on Ukraine it is next to nothing, a gesture of almost incalculable meagreness, but it is what football can do. And if that provides succour to anybody, then it is worth something.
