Читать книгу Notorious: The Maddest and Baddest Sportsmen on the Planet - Richard Bath - Страница 9

Sport’s ability to make a difference in the most extreme circumstances was demonstrated by the ultimate pyrrhic victory in the midst of the madness that was the eastern front during the Second World War. In arguably the most savage and one-sided David versus Goliath encounters of all time, a bunch of malnourished Ukrainian footballers in rags and shoes took on the mighty Luftwaffe in what became known as The Death Match. It was the classic Catch 22: lose and they betrayed the nation, win and they would face a firing squad or worse. They won.

The ‘they’ in question was Start FC, the reassembled ashes of the 1939 Dynamo Kiev side which had been one of the best pre-war outfits in Europe, possibly the greatest of Europe’s inter-war sides. When the Nazis overran Kiev during Operation Barbarossa, many of the side were dispatched to slave labour camps; others, such as Lazar Kogen, were summarily executed.

Many Ukrainians initially doubted that the Nazis could be worse than Stalin, who had a man jailed for ten years for being first to sit down after a standing ovation and had another executed for taking down Stalin’s portrait to paint the wall behind it. Yet within a fortnight of taking Kiev, the Nazis had slaughtered 33,000 Jews at Babi Yar and the city’s inhabitants understood the horrific nature of an occupation which only 20 per cent of Kiev’s inhabitants would survive.

The highest-profile member of that Dynamo Kiev team was Nikolai Trusevich. In late 1941 the charismatic goalkeeper had just been released from an internment camp but was close to death from starvation. As the emaciated figure shuffled around looking for food to keep him alive—every cat, dog and rat in the city had already been eaten—he ran into football-mad Losif Kordik whose reward for collaborating with the Nazis was to be given charge of a large bakery. Not only did Kordik give the former Dynamo captain the job which saved his life, but he also ordered him to scour the city and employ any former team-mates he could find.

When the Nazis allowed football to be played in 1942 in an attempt to normalise life, the bakery owner asked Trusevich to form a team from his fellow workers—almost all of whom were Dynamo men—but many worried they would be seen as collaborators. Trusevich argued the opposite case passionately: ‘We may not have weapons but we can fight on the football pitch. We will be playing in the colour of our flag. The fascists should know that our colour cannot be defeated.’ And so Start FC was born.

Despite their shambolic physical state, Start beat a team of local collaborators 7-2, then dispatched sides representing occupying forces from Hungary and Romania, the latter 11-0. When Start beat a German unit 6-0 and started to become a focus for Ukrainian pride, alarm-bells sounded and the Germans fielded the best team in the Reich, the Luftwaffe’s Flakelf. Start’s starving Slavs beat the well-fed Aryan Supermensch 5-1.

Apoplectic, the Germans ordered a replay, which took place before a capacity crowd of Ukrainians and Germans, with 200 Wehrmacht dog handlers in attendance. Nobody harboured any illusions about what another Start win would mean. Just before the match an SS officer walked in and announced that he would be the referee, instructing the Start players to give the Nazi salute before the game. Flakelf saluted to loud roars from the German spectators, but when Start instead clapped their fists to their chests and shouted ‘Fitzcult Hura’—(‘physical culture’ the traditional greeting before any Soviet sporting event) they had signed their death warrants.

When the Ukrainians led 3-1 at half-time, they were visited by another SS officer. ‘You have played very well,’ he said. ‘And we are very impressed. But you cannot expect to win. I want you to take a moment to think of the consequences.’ They did, winning 5-3, with defender Klimenko running almost the whole length of the pitch, through several tackles, to the goal line, but instead of putting the ball into the goal he stopped it on the line; toying with the Master Race and humiliating them in the process. Then he ran into the goal, turned, and kicked the ball back up the field. That’s when the referee blew for full-time, more than fifteen minutes early.

Very few Start players escaped, and most were tortured before being dispatched to the great clubhouse in the sky. On the day when Trusevich was finally killed, two Start teammates in his labour camp had already died of wounds inflicted in the torture chamber when he was instructed to line up. A guard, approaching him from behind, tried to use his rifle butt on the back of Trusevich’s head but, defiant and agile to the end, he dodged the blow and leapt at the guard screaming: ‘Red sport will never die’. Three guns barked: he was dead before he hit the ground.