PTFC For Peace

This evening, Wednesday April 27th, 2022, The Portland Thorns and the Portland Timbers have planned a friendly game at Providence Park, a first of a kind mixed teams match. The game will be a benefit to raise funds for UNICEF’s reliefs efforts in Ukraine and bordering countries involved in the worst refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. Both Thorns and Timbers will split and mix into two coed teams, Team Blue and Team Yellow, to match the Ukrainian flag.

The Yellow Nike team is co-captained by Christine Sinclair and Sebastián Blanco, while the Blue Adidas team, is co-captained by Kelli Hubly and Diego Chará. A jovial draft was held online last week, you can check the full rosters at the event website here.

The premise is simple, it’s a free event, and all are encouraged to donate to UNICEF, the club will match donations up to $100,000 and proceeds surrounding the event will enable UNICEF and its partners to take action to meet the growing needs of children and their families affected by the war. All seats will be general admission and redeemable through SeatGeek with an option to donate to UNICEF USA while acquiring a ticket.

The event will count on supporting partners that include adidas, Dutch Bros, SeatGeek, Nike, Tillamook, Toyota, and Umpqua Bank along with presenting media partner, The Oregonian. AMR (American Medical Response), Bike Racker, Coast to Coast, the Levy Restaurants, and PRO Referees will be donating their time and services to the event.

Christine Sinclair, team Yellow co-captain, says “Soccer is a universal and unifying sport, and as professionals, it’s important for us to use our platform for those in need and right now that’s Ukraine”. She follows with “This is something we’ve wanted to do as a club for years, and I couldn’t think of a better reason to pull it off now than to raise money for an important cause. A match like this is one of its kind and while this game will be entertaining no doubt, the focus is to provide relief for Ukraine.”

Sebastián Blanco, the other co-captain of team Yellow, has direct experience of the tensions that this latent conflict had had for decades, while he played for FC Metalist, located in Kharkiv. You might be very familiar by now with that city, a besieged city since the beginning of the war two months ago.

Blanco played with Metalist FC from 2011 to 2014, and reached the Europa League quarter finals, qualified for UEFA Champions League, and finish second in the Ukrainian Premier League. In 2014 his tenure reached an end as tensions grew and ultimately war broke out with the Russian invasion that resulted in the Crimean Peninsula take over.

Sebastián Blanco, native of Lomas de Zamora, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, recalls his move a world away to Eastern Ukraine, very fondly. For Blanco, this game will be a special evening, as he saw firsthand the unrest. Needless to say, that 2014 conflict was another step towards what we are sadly witnessing today.

“I played many times in Mariupol, in Kyiv, in Lviv, Dnipro, and Donetsk,” Blanco said. “I lived there. I know the cities. I know everything. I remember every city and when I see them in the news it’s very sad.”

The current conflict that broke out roughly two months ago has already displaced over three million people and has been called the fastest growing refugee crisis in history. In Europe, the numbers of this tragedy are second only to World War II.

For a some perspective, the European theater of that war ended in May 1945, that is a few weeks short of 77 years ago. Children that survived the brutal bombing from Hitler’s invasion, started in the summer of 1942, now seniors, are known to have died under the bombing from the 2022 Russian invasion. A brutal perspective.

The match will be played in a normal 60 minute full-field match, and in case of a tie, the winner will be sorted out from the penalty spot. We are all hopping the real winners are the children and their families who will get much needed relief, and hopefully in the near future, we shall see again, peace.