MOSCOW, October 24, Sergey Smyshlyaev. Ex-national football player In Russia, Andrei Solomatin admitted in an interview that during his professional career he did not run as fast as he did under mortar fire in the zone of a special military operation in Ukraine.
Solomatin at the beginning of August joined the ranks of the Espanyol brigade — a volunteer unit formed from fans of various clubs. He signed a six-month contract.
“»Of course, I remember (the first time it became truly scary). And not even every minute, but every second. It turned out that the commander and the guys and I were driving through the positions. You drive in, look at the sky — if you notice “birds” «, then we need to hide faster. We drove into the green area on quads, and to get to the position we had to move through open terrain. I joked later that I never accelerated on the football field as much as I ran between landings. You hear the whistle of a mine «, fell, explosion, ran on. We got to the dugout, and there they started firing at us with cluster munitions,» Solomatin said.
Solomatin is 48 years old; between 1998 and 2003, he played 13 matches for the Russian national team, scoring one goal. At the club level he played for Moscow Torpedo, Lokomotiv and CSKA, as well as for Krasnodar Kuban, Samara Krylya Sovetov, Makhachkala Anzhi and Ukrainian Obolon. As a member of the Russian national team, he competed at the 2002 World Cup and won the Russian championship with CSKA.