On Tuesday, March 1st, 2022 the German head coach, Markus Gisdol, quit his job as the manager of the Russian football club, Lokomotiv Moscow, in an ultimate gesture of protest towards the invasion of Ukraine by Russian military forces.
The Lokomotiv Moscow football club stated basically that Markus Gisdol was, “Removed from the post of head coach,” less than 4 – months in charge as the head coach of the Lokomotiv Moscow football club. Gisdol explained to the German tabloid publication, Bild, that it was a gesture of protest at working in a country, “Whose head of state is responsible for a war of aggression in the middle of Europe.”
“I cannot stand on the training field in Moscow, coaching the players, demanding professionalism, and a couple of kilometers away orders are being issued which bring great suffering to an entire people,” Gisdol expressed to the tabloid newspaper.
The Lokomotiv Moscow football club is currently owned by the Russian Railways, which just so happened to be placed under sanctions last week by the United States of America. Gisdol was originally assigned his previous job role last October of 2021 by the then – sporting director, Ralf Rangnick, who then formerly transitioned to become the present head coach of the Manchester United football club.
The former striker for Liverpool as well as the Ukraine, Andriy Voronin, abandoned his recent post as an assistant coach of Dynamo Moscow, and the Ukrainian goal – tender, Yaroslav Hodzyur, quit his post at the club being called, Ural Yekaterinburg. Ural’s president told the Tass news agency a 2nd – Ukrainian player would follow also follow suit sometime soon.
Others are staying put. “I’m not the kind of person to take a ticket and fly away,” the Dynamo’s German head coach Sandro Schwarz disclosed in comments published in Russian on the club website last Saturday. “That’s not me. I feel responsibility and I will be at the club.”
Despite the war recently started by Vladimir Putin between Russia and the Ukraine, the Russian Premier League football organization has persistent continued their operations even though there is a war breaking out in the surrounding areas, while the Ukrainian Premier League was indefinitely suspended/postponed when the invasion of Ukraine by Russian militia initiated mid to late last week.
Brazilian players from clubs in the surrounding area of Ukraine asked for assistance from their government in order for them to leave the area due to the recent non – sensical war efforts that Russia initiated not too long ago.
Sources:
The Associated Press News Services. “German coach quits Russian soccer club in protest at war”. The Associated Press. March 1, 2022.
