‘Longest’ match in Ukraine league history caused by Dnipro air-raid

A Ukrainian Premier League match finished a record four hours and 36 minutes after kick-off following multiple disruptions from air-raid warnings.

Dnipro-1 secured a 1-0 win over FC Oleksandriya, having already seen the match initially delayed by 15 minutes at the Dnipro Arena because of an air-raid siren.

Players were then subjected to an hour’s delay caused by another siren after being ordered off the pitch again early in the second half. The match was then postponed again for a further hour and a half with just one minute remaining of normal time.

The match which was initially due to start at 5pm local time eventually finished close to 10pm. Dnipro had only started playing again at their home stadium in September, having relocated to the country’s west after Russia’s invasion in February 2022. League officials later confirmed it had set a competition record.

With Dnipro-1 now in second place in the Ukrainian Premier League, the team’s defender Eduard Sarapiy told the club website his team were desperate to finish the match.

“This is the first such long game for us, and it could have ended badly for us. We wanted to play all of the game. We took to the pitch and tried to finish the game only by winning it,” he said.

A Ukrainian Premier League spokesman told a BBC journalist that it was the longest game in the competition’s history. “The match lasted four hours 36 minutes, and this is a new record,” the league said.

“The previous longest match was last season’s game between FC Rukh and FC Metalist, which lasted four hours 27 minutes. The reason was the same — an air-raid siren.”

Dnipro is located some distance from the front line, but the BBC reported an elderly man was killed in a Russian air strike in the region a day before the game.