Signings of War: Tetê, Solomon, Kvaratskhelia and Co.
Clubs all over Europe are picking apart the Ukrainian and Russian teams for their bright young gems.
The ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine has brought much destruction, famine and despair to the Wild Fields. Entire cities have been razed to the ground. Power plants and medical facilities have been reduced to ashes and rubble. The people have seen their access to essential goods curtailed by all sorts of horrid threats to their lives.
It almost seems wrong to speak of the repercussions this war is having on football when the ongoing violence has taken thousands of lives and forced several more to flee from their war-torn home.
But the repercussions are there. And they are frightening.
They are the debasement of Ukrainian and Russian top squads — and the profit of savvy Central and Western European clubs enjoying the opportunity to add young international talent outside the winter transfer window to their ranks.
While there is no doubt that it is better for these players to currently move somewhere where they can actually play and continue to work on their game, it is scary to think that formidable names of Eastern European football such as Shakhtar Donetsk, Dynamo Kyiv, Rubin Kazan and others could lose present and future star players due to this conflict.
It is also true that most players are simply being loaned out for the remainder of the 2021/22 season, along the premise that the armed aggression permeating Ukraine will soon come to a close and domestic competitions will resume their course.
But the refusal of several Brazilian players in joining Shakhtar Donetsk’s “training camp” in Istanbul earlier in April shows that not all international players seek to remain a part of their teams. Instead, they are pursuing an inevitably permanent move to greener pastures beyond the mine-filled plains of Ukraine.
And while some are moving back to the safe harbors of their home country, like Vitão (SC Internacional) Maycon, and Júnior Moraes (Corinthians), others are shooting their shot at the top European leagues, with rising stars Tetê and Vinícius Tobias going on loan to Olympique Lyonnais and Real Madrid, respectively.
And it’s not just the Brazilians of Shakhtar Donetsk who are ruling out a return to their home team. Israeli international Manor Solomon is set to join Fulham for a bargain (£6.3 million), while Rubin Kazan’s star Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, currently playing in his home country of Georgia, is expected to move to Napoli at the start of next season for just €10 million.
It all just looks like a clearance sale of Ukraine and Russia’s international talent.
Several veterans have already jumped ship definitively — Viktor Claesson and Rémy Cabella (formerly Krasnodar), Pablo (formerly Lokomotiv Moscow), Eduard Sobol (formerly Shakhtar Donetsk) and Yaroslav Rakitskiy (formerly Zenit) to name a few. Many others are being loaned, but the odds of these players making a post-war return to their former teams seem slim at best.
That being said, there looms a large expectation that more wonderkids will follow suit. Young stars such as David Neres, Viktor Tsygankov, Anatoliy Trubin and Ilya Zabarnyi have kept their cards close to their chest, but the reality is that they are all in the radar of Europe’s top leagues. It will be interesting to see whether these players can be persuaded to join a new team before the start of the 2022/23 season.
What do you think of the ongoing conflict’s consequences on Ukrainian and Russian squads? Do you believe other clubs are taking advantage of the war to take in great quality players at a discount? Is it ethical? Clap and share your opinion with us in the comments!
