Chelsea are set to host a star-studded charity football match aimed at raising funds for war-torn Ukraine, a year after Abramovich’s exit from the club.
TV host Alex Scott, singer Niall Horan, England hero David Beckham and pundit Rio Ferdinand are the stars that will be lining up for the match.
The Charity match is scheduled to be held at the Chelsea home – Stamford Bridge – on August 5th, 2023.
Former Chelsea player Andriy Shevchenko and fellow countryman Oleksandr Zinchenko are tipped to captain the side in the match.
Game4Ukraine is also set to raise funds for President Volodymyr Zelensky’s United24 global charity as well.
Abramovich departed Chelsea following Vladimir Putin’s Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February and UK sanctions afterwards.
A Source confirmed that: “Game4- Ukraine is going to be the biggest charity event of the year.”
“As well as a massive match, there is going to be a huge half-time show from a couple of big name stars.”
“It is going to be a stellar event.”
The game will be overseen by Lester Holcombe, whose 2017 Game4Grenfell raised about £900,000 for victims of the tower block disaster.
Chelsea
Chelsea Football Club is an English professional football club based in Fulham, West London.
The club was founded in 1905. They play their home games at their home ground Stamford Bridge.
The Blues as they are fondly called competes in the Premier League, the top division of English football and won their first major honour, the League championship, in 1955.
The Stamford Bridge outfit won the FA Cup for the first time in 1970, their first European honour, the Cup Winners’ Cup, in 1971, and became the third English club to win the Club World Cup in 2022.
Chelsea are one of five clubs to have won all three pre-1999 main European club competitions, and the only club to have won all three major European competitions twice.
The Blues are the only club in London to have won the the Champions League and the Club World Cup.
In England, Chelsea have won six Premier League titles, eight FA Cups, five League Cups, and four FA Community Shields.
Roman Abramovich
Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich is a Russian-Israeli-Portuguese oligarch and politician who was born 24 on October 1966.
The Russian is the former owner of Chelsea, a Premier League football club in London, England, and is the primary owner of the private investment company Millhouse LLC.
He currently holds the citizenship of both Russian and Israel.
Abramovich was previously the Governor of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug from 2000 to 2008.
Forbes confirmed that Abramovich net worth was US$14.5 billion in 2021, making him the second-richest person in Israel, and since then the wealth decreased to 6.9 billion (in 2022), and recovered up to $9.2 billion in 2023.
The Russian reportedly enriched himself in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, obtaining Russian state-owned assets at prices far below market value in Russia’s controversial loans-for-shares privatisation program.
He was allegedly said to have a personal relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin, which played a major role in him losing the ownership of Chelsea.
Russian Invasion of Ukraine
Russia invaded and captured areas of Ukraine on 24th February, 2022 and it escalated to the Russian-Ukrainian War that had previously started in 2014.
Several people had died as a result of the invasion which has also started the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.
Reports had it that by June 2022, about 8 million Ukrainians were internally displaced, and by May 2023, more than 8.2 million had left the nation.
Russian army were stationed close to Ukraine’s borders for months before the invasion despite repeated denials from Russian authorities that they intended to attack Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed that a “special military operation” on February 24, 2022, to support the Donetsk and Luhansk armed groups that were fighting Ukrainian forces in the Donbas conflict.
