When the bombs started to drop on February 24, Oleksandr Petrakov marched out of his home in Kyiv to enlist in his country’s Territorial Defence Corps.
At 64, Ukraine’s head coach was sent home but the words of the army officials who turned him away still ring in his ears.
“They said, ‘You are too old and don’t have any military skills,” Petrakov recalled. “Instead, you better bring us to the World Cup. ’”
