West Ham’s Andriy Yarmolenko candidly admitted that playing on at his club as the war commenced in Ukraine was the only way he could stop himself going ‘crazy’ at the thought of his family being shelled by Russian forces then.
Addressing publicly for the first time the turmoil he had to endure since the invasion of his homeland last month, West Ham forward Yarmolenko, 32, revealed his anguish at having sent his family back to Kyiv for a medical appointment a day before the tanks rolled in.
“When it all started, on February 24, I arrived at training and couldn’t even talk,’ Yarmolenko told Ukrainian YouTube channel Football 1/2/3.
“I had tears flowing. I asked the coach to let me go home.
“I didn’t believe this could happen — I sent my family to Kyiv because my child had to have a doctor’s appointment.
“Can you imagine what I was like when it started the next morning? I just wanted to run and hit my head against a wall — what a fool I was sending my family to Kyiv and I am sitting in London.”
Thankfully, Yarmolenko was subsequently able to get his family out of harm’s way and back to safety in London and has since continued to play for his club, registering goals against Aston Villa and Sevilla. He made the frank admission that football has helped distract him from the war atrocities back home in Ukraine.
“David Moyes told me I could choose to train or not and that I had to do everything I could to ensure the safety of my family,’ he said. ‘I needed to remain professional so I returned.
“I was just going crazy and you need to be distracted. But even now, I don’t know what the other results are. It is just training ends and then the phone calls home.”
When questioned about about his the rest of his family’s well-being in his homeland, he said:
“All the relatives are alive and well. My cousins help keep in touch with uncles, aunts. The ones there, where there is constant shelling going on, they are in bomb shelters, hiding in basements.
“It is honestly scary to talk about it. We have to help each other — if we do not then no one will.
“I am sure we will not be beaten by any country. No one will ever be able to break our spirit.”