Last summer, Oleksandr Zinchenko was still a Ukrainian folk hero.

With a goal and an assist, he led the outsider into the quarter-finals of the European Championship and thus triggered huge enthusiasm for football.

Just nine months later, the Manchester City professional has completely different concerns.

The Russian war of aggression against his country is giving him and his colleagues, who actually wanted to qualify for the World Cup in Qatar, a hard time emotionally.

"I'm just crying," Zinchenko recently told the BBC.

Football and the national team are out of the question at the moment, the country has been in a state of emergency for almost four weeks.

"It's all in my head.

Imagine the place where you were born, where you grew up, and it's all destroyed," Zinchenko said.

The fact that he does not fight for his country himself in Ukraine is solely due to his daughter - the 25-year-old soccer star lives with his family in England.

FIFA has initially postponed the play-off game against Scotland in Glasgow, scheduled for March 24, until June and hopes that the situation in the conflict will have improved by then.

Considerable doubts about this seem appropriate, and there is currently no space for questions about dates and details.

“This is so small compared to everything that is happening right now.

And whether we end up at the World Cup in Qatar or not is of no interest to anyone at the moment.

Neither do the boys.

Everyone is waiting and hoping that this nightmare will pass," former Bundesliga professional Andrej Voronin told the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

"It was so emotional for me"

The association said that the resumption of the game and the clarification of the playoff question would only be an issue when the guns rested.

It is not foreseeable when this will happen.

While the national league in Ukraine is also on hold, Zinchenko, Roman Yaremchuk and Co. are still active in their international clubs and have been able to send messages in this way over the past few weeks.

Just before the start of the war, Benfica's Yaremchuk removed his jersey after a goal and showed a black shirt with the coat of arms of Ukraine.

National team strike partner Andriy Jarmolenko from West Ham United recently achieved strong actions and goals in the Premier League and Europa League, which he used for gestures.

"It was so emotional for me because of the situation in my country.

It's so hard to think about football right now.

The Russian army is killing people in Ukraine every day,” Yamolenko said.

Defender Yaroslav Rakizkyj is even closer to the action, having played for Zenit St. Petersburg before the start of the war.

"Due to a difficult family situation, the player asked the club to terminate his contract early," the club said about a week after the start of the Russian invasion, without going into more detail about the circumstances.

Rakizkyj had previously polarized in 2019 with his move from Shakhtar Donetsk to Zenit and had to take heavy criticism in his home country.

With the beginning of the invasion, however, Rakizkyj positioned himself clearly.

He posted a photo of the Ukrainian flag and wrote: "I'm Ukrainian." He then sat on the bench at Zenit before the chapter ended entirely.