When the bombs started to drop on February 24, Oleksandr Petrakov marched out of his home in Kyiv to enlist in his country’s Territorial Defence Corps.
At 64, Ukraine’s head coach was sent home but the words of the army officials who turned him away still ring in his ears.
“They said, ‘You are too old and don’t have any military skills,” Petrakov recalled. “Instead, you better bring us to the World Cup. ’”
Midfielder Taras Stepanenko, his wife and three boys all aged eight and under, cowered in the basement of their home as bombs rained down nearby. He eventually moved his family out of the capital to Chernivtsi, a safer haven, but one which has been bombed since.
Another midfielder, Oleksandr Karavayev, was born and bred in the southern city of Kherson, now under Russian occupation. His brother, a seaman, was out of the country when the invasion began and isn’t allowed back into the city.
Real life people, real life stories of the horror that has visited some of the players who will walk out at Hampden with more than a football match at stake.
And let’s face it, if they weren’t playing us, we’d want them to win.
So it’s perfectly understandable Scotland will be cast in the role of villain if we add to Ukraine’s misery tonight by knocking them out of the World Cup.
But it’s only right and fair Steve Clarke’s men are given the chance to do just that. And for that matter, Ukraine are presented with the same opportunity to qualify for Qatar on the field of play rather than a FIFA boardroom.
That said, if the suits had granted an extra place in the desert come November and allocated it to this brave, unbowed nation, there’s not a soul with an ounce of mercy in their heart who would have begrudged them it.
That would then have left Scotland and Wales to compete for the other place and, again, there would have been no complaints.
FIFA, though, decided a 33-team tournament couldn’t be made to work, when with a little bit of creativity, surely it could have happened.
But at Hampden, we’ll see the result of their ‘can’t do’ attitude. Either Scotland or Ukraine will fall at the play-off semi final stage and while a victory for the besieged nation would bring temporary respite from the misery their people are enduring at the hands of Putin’s war machine, Scotland’s players cannot for a single second afford to allow that sentiment to cloud their thinking.
This is a sporting affair and Clarke’s men have to match the commitment that their opponents will undoubtedly bring to the occasion. Never will a Scotland side have faced a team so desperate to succeed, but if the Scots are to end 24 years of footballing misery - obviously incomparable to the real agonies endured by the Ukrainian people - then they too will have to have given everything and then some for the cause.
They will be facing a very good side; one which reached the last eight of the Euros last summer before being beaten by England. They were good enough to win at Hampden in the previous round, knocking out Sweden.
Everything has changed since then, of course.
Domestic football in Ukraine has been suspended since the Russian invasion and home-based players will be desperately short of match fitness. But many of their squad, based abroad, have been playing at a high level.
Oleksandr Zinchenko at Manchester City, Roman Yaremchuk at Benfica, West Ham’s Andriy Yarmolenko and Everton’s Vitaliy Mykolenko are no mugs but neither are Clarke’s men.
There should be no inferiority complex here, not when Scotland are playing so well and with so many top class players within the ranks.
With guys such as Andy Robertson, Scott McTominay, Billy Gilmour, Callum McGregor and John McGinn in the ranks, this is a Scotland side with the ability to beat Ukraine.
Clarke will have the game plan and in that aspect, there’s few better.
They also have to be ruthless. If some of the visitors are short of fitness, let’s test that to the limit by setting a tempo that they’ll find hard to handle.
Let the Tartan Army play its part by creating an atmosphere that will inspire Clarke players and at the end of the game, if we’ve won, that will be the time to show compassion to the Ukrainians.
They won’t be showing any to Scotland during the 90 minutes, that’s for sure.
“There will be an incredible atmosphere in Hampden Park,” Petrakov told Time Magazine recently. “After missiles, rockets, and bombs, we don’t fear anything.”
Their players and their countrymen will fight more important battles in the months to come but this, in a sporting context, is one Scotland can’t allow them to win.
And if that makes us the bad guys in the eyes of the world, so be it.
