Calay News
Kosse is a former soccer player who played for FC Salyut Belgorod, CSKA Moscow, and Lokomotiv Moscow during Soviet times. He even scored a goal against the United States in 1994. Today, however, at the Mykolaiv soccer stadium in Ukraine, Kosse walks the field in a different way. Despite the war, he has decided to stay in Ukraine and make that stadium his home, treating it as if it were his own.
When Mykolaiv became a city located on the front lines of the war, Kosse decided to stay and take care of the soccer stadium. “Everyone has the right to want to leave or stay,” he says. The war has done a strange thing to men, and he has found his purpose in taking care of a soccer field. Despite the gunfire and bombs ringing through the city and the advancing troops, Kosse goes about his daily routine of watering the field, mowing the lawn, and tending to his home.
The town of Mykolaiv has suffered greatly during the war, so much so that it had only salt water in its pipes. Despite all this, Kosse continues to look after the stadium as if nothing had happened. The green of the field contrasts with the huge crater that interrupts the athletic tracks surrounding the pitch. During a Russian bombardment, several missiles hit the facility and damaged the stands and the building from which VIP guests watched the game in peacetime. “Everything was destroyed by the explosion,” laments Kosse as he tries to fix the minor damage he comes across.
Not even the Ukrainian army managed to evict Kosse from the stadium when he needed the facilities during the height of the conflict. He only gave them one condition: “I told them I would only leave if they took care of the field, they told me they weren’t going to do that, so I refused.” Kosse’s story and his struggle to take care of the Mykolaiv soccer stadium is an example of dedication and love for what one does, even in the midst of war and adversity.
