Kakhovskie Romashki

The stadium in Kherson has a different name today than the one it was built with.

It is a place of two halves, divided by the war. Before 2022 it was the home of FC Kristall Kherson, and the city remembered it for the concerts that filled the stands when Okean Elzy came through. A 40 by 60 metre flag of Ukraine was unfurled there in 2016 during a tournament, and for a brief moment the ground felt like it belonged to something larger than football.

The reconstruction in 2011 and 2012 did not go far enough to save it.

There is a small terrace of seating for 3,400 people, but the rest of the 11,000 capacity is open concrete. The surface is natural grass, or it was before the damage. The ground is old enough to have survived Soviet-era construction and a recent rebuild, but the last few years have taken a toll that concrete and steel cannot fix. You cannot walk through it without noticing the gaps in the walls.