What one football match started between Wales and Ukraine

Yuliia Bond

A handwritten welcome card.

That wasn’t what I expected to remember most from our first football match.

Like every founder of a new grassroots club, I’d spent weeks worrying about registrations, player availability, finding a pitch, organising kits and wondering whether everyone would actually turn up on time. I wasn’t thinking about welcome cards.

But when we walked into the changing room before our first match against Caerphilly Athletic FC, our club badge was already on the door. Captain’s armbands had been laid out. One of their players had left us a handwritten message wishing us luck.

It probably took someone five minutes.

I don’t think they’ll ever realise how much those five minutes meant.

That’s the moment I realised we weren’t simply building a football team.

We were becoming part of a community.

Tryzub FC is only two months old.

Like many grassroots clubs, it started with a conversation, an idea and probably a little more optimism than common sense. Today, our players travel from across Wales every week just to train together. If you’ve ever tried organising amateur football, you’ll know persuading everyone to arrive at the same place at the same time is almost a sporting achievement in itself.

People often ask me what Tryzub FC actually is.

Yes, we’re a Ukrainian football club.

But I don’t think that’s the most interesting thing about us.

The interesting part is what we’re trying to become.

Every player in our squad has their own story. Every family has been affected by the war in different ways. Some still speak to relatives in Ukraine every day. Others wait for messages they wish didn’t have to come. Those stories belong to them, and they’re not mine to tell.

What I can say is this.

When training starts, football has an incredible ability to make all of us equal.

Nobody is thinking about paperwork, headlines or difficult phone calls back home.

Someone misses an open goal.

Someone argues that it definitely wasn’t offside.

Someone insists they would have scored if the pass had been better.

For ninety minutes, we’re just another football team.

Honestly, that’s a gift.

Grassroots football

That was exactly the atmosphere when Caerphilly Athletic welcomed us for our first match.

Officially, the score was 6-4 to Tryzub FC.

Unofficially, I don’t think any of us will remember the score in a few years’ time.

What we’ll remember is what happened afterwards.

Long after the final whistle, nobody seemed in any hurry to leave. Children were still kicking footballs around while parents who had met only a couple of hours earlier stood chatting as though they’d known each other for years. Players from both teams shared food, laughed together and immediately started talking about arranging another game.

That’s grassroots football.

It doesn’t just create football teams.

It creates communities.

It also changed the way I thought about the future of our club.

Until then, I believed we were trying to build a football team.

That afternoon made me realise we could help build something much bigger.

Following the match, conversations began about creating a partnership between Caerphilly Athletic FC and a youth football club in Kyiv.

The more we discussed the idea, the more obvious it seemed.

Why should this stop with one club?

Why couldn’t football clubs across Wales build friendships with football clubs across Ukraine?

For me, this isn’t really about football boots or donated kits.

It’s about people.

Across Ukraine, thousands of children continue to play football every single week despite living through the reality of war.

Many have been displaced from the towns where they grew up.

Many have lost parents or close family members.

Many have mothers or fathers serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Many families who once had comfortable, ordinary lives now struggle financially because of the war. Parents who would happily have bought new boots, training kit or paid club subscriptions a few years ago now have to make incredibly difficult choices just to manage everyday life.

Yet every week those children still arrive for training.

Some clubs coach children who have never known a full football season without air raid sirens.

Some coaches have become far more than coaches. They’re mentors, role models, counsellors and sometimes simply the one adult who gives children a sense of normality each week.

Football cannot stop a war.

But it can protect something that every child deserves.

Childhood.

For an hour or two, children stop being children living through extraordinary circumstances.

They’re simply arguing about who should take the next free kick.

They’re celebrating goals.

They’re laughing with teammates.

They’re just kids.

Sometimes that’s far more important than we realise.

Friendship

Of course, practical support matters too.

Every year, grassroots clubs across Wales replace footballs, boots, training equipment and kits that still have plenty of life left in them. For many youth clubs in Ukraine, those same items could make a real difference.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past two months, it’s that friendship lasts much longer than equipment.

Imagine children in Caerphilly getting to know children in Kyiv.

Imagine coaches sharing ideas and experiences.

Imagine clubs visiting one another in the future, when peace finally comes.

Imagine young footballers growing up knowing they have friends in another country because two local clubs decided to work together.

That feels like something worth building.

We’re also proud that our first competitive fixtures as a club are part of Andy’s Summer League, raising money for Andy’s Man Club, a charity that supports men’s mental health by giving men a safe place to talk, listen and know they don’t have to face life’s challenges alone.

It felt like the right way for Tryzub FC to begin, not just by playing football, but by supporting a cause that makes a real difference in our local community.

We don’t want to be a club that’s known only for receiving support.

We want to support the communities that have welcomed us too.

Once Wales becomes your home, local causes become your causes.

I think that’s what integration really looks like – not as a slogan, but as people standing alongside one another when something matters.

Invitation

So this is an invitation.

If you’re involved with a grassroots football club anywhere in Wales – as a volunteer, coach, committee member, player or parent, and you think your club might like to build a friendship with a youth football club in Ukraine, we’d love to hear from you.

This isn’t about creating a charity project.

It’s about creating relationships.

The handwritten welcome card waiting for us in that changing room didn’t change the world.

But it changed how I saw Welsh football.

It reminded me that the real strength of grassroots football has never been measured by league tables or trophies.

It’s measured by the way ordinary people quietly make others feel that they belong.

If clubs across Wales and Ukraine can build those kinds of friendships together, I honestly think we’ll create something far more lasting than a successful football season.

We’ll create a community that stretches across borders.

And for a football club that’s only two months old, that’s already a dream worth chasing.

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