“To become a professional football player from the place where I was born and raised was almost impossible. It was super, super tough,” Oleksandr Zinchenko says as his eyes widen and we consider how far he has come from his small home town of Radomyshl in northern Ukraine. “We didn’t have many facilities and we trained only twice a week, for one game, and this is not the way to become a professional. It was a pure joy to play and train with my local team but I was always wanting more. My mother said she saw the fire in my eyes to make it.”
We sit in a light and airy room on a beautiful autumn afternoon in Hampstead. In Ukraine, as a devastating war grinds on, winter will be another brutal test. Zinchenko picks up his phone. “This morning my aunt sent me a video,” he says. “She has been working in a nursery for more than 30 years. The video shows where she was hiding in the shelter from 7.30 until 10.30 because there was a siren. Working with kids, she cannot take any risk.”
