At the entrance to Stadion Wroclaw stands a short plinth commemorating the venue’s role in Euro 2012. The logo from that summer, a flower in Polish red and white adjoined to one in their Ukrainian co-hosts’ blue and yellow, recalls a simpler time: an era when fans could watch a game here one evening, catch another in Lviv within 24 hours and, with a fair wind, carry on in Kharkiv or Donetsk the following night.
The presence of England shines light on a more modern version of unity between the two nations. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made the world smaller and football has felt the effects: Serhiy Rebrov’s team have not played on their own soil since November 2021 and this will be the fourth time in five that Poland has stepped in. More than 250,000 Ukrainians are thought to reside in Wroclaw now, a figure unmatched anywhere else in the country. This is as close as Ukraine can get, for now, to a home fixture.
