Story By: Alex Cope, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Golder’s News And Sport
The Ukrainian striker who was labelled a fascist by opposition fans – causing a La Liga 2 match to be abandoned – has said he cannot be a Nazi because his best friend is a black Birmingham City player.
Albacete striker Roman Zozulya was the object of chants calling him a “f*cking Nazi” in his side’s recent clash with Rayo Vallecano, causing the match to be abandoned at half-time.
The Ukrainian striker had signed for Vallecano on-loan in 2017 but his contract was ended in February after Vallecano’s fans protested against his alleged far-right views.
Photos allegedly showing his support for Nazism have emerged on social media.
One of the photos labelled as showing him supporting Nazism saw him wearing a basketball vest with the number 18 on it as he points at a scoreboard with the number 88 on it. The number 18 is associated with Adolf Hitler as his initials A and H are the first and eighth letters of the alphabet. The number 88 is associated with the phrase ‘Heil Hitler’ for the same reason.
Zozulya has now defended himself at a press conference, saying: “I’m just a footballer, I don’t have political ideas. They call me a racist but my best friend is (Jeremie) Bela (a black footballer who currently plays for Birmingham City and used to play for Albacete). The president of my country is Jewish and he is backing me up. If I were a Nazi that would not happen.
“They accuse me of having tattoos with symbols but I don’t have any, you can ask my teammates in the changing rooms who see me every day.”
Speaking about the picture in the basketball vest, he said: “They gave me the shirt number 18, I didn’t choose it, but what’s more I didn’t know the number had a political meaning, just like 95 percent of the world don’t know.”
Speaking about a photo taken of him posing with a gun he said: “I took it to support our army, our heroes. Ukraine was at war and lots of us collaborated with humanitarian actions, paying for ambulances, clothes and food, helping hospitals and visiting areas of the front with my team to show my support as a patriot.
“We dedicated ourselves to saving lives as part of a civil movement, we never bought arms, I am a patriot and that is not a crime. I wouldn’t want anybody whose ideology defended any type of violence in my team or in my stadium.”
And defending a photo of him posing with a scarf bearing the face of Stepan Bandera, the head of a militant wing of the Ukrainian independence movement who had links with the Third Reich, the striker said: “I did it with a few acquaintances at school and I put it on Facebook saying we looked like each other. Ten years ago the President of Ukraine named him a hero of the country. I want to repeat that I did it because I have the same hairline and I look like him.”
Bandera moved to German-occupied Europe in 1939 and cultivated German military circles favourable to Ukrainian independence. He remains a highly controversial figure in Ukraine, with some hailing him as a freedom fighter who fought against both the Soviets and the Nazis to try to establish an independent Ukraine. Others reportedly see him as a fascist who was partly responsible for the Holocaust in Ukraine.
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