The Death Match in Ukraine - When a football game became an act of defiance

The documentary “The Fatal Eleven” tells the true story about a very special game. It looked like a football match, but it was far more. 

I have always been fascinated by football not just as a game, but as a stage where history, courage, and dramatic human stories unfold. Some matches in history were not about victory - they were played by men who literally fought for their lives. Here is one of them - where dramatic moments tell bigger stories than the score. 

On 9th August 1942, inside a packed Zenit Stadium in Kyiv, a team called FC Start - made up of exhausted Ukrainian workers and secret former stars from Dynamo Kyiv and Lokomotiv - walked onto the field to face Flakelf, a team of German Luftwaffe soldiers. To the Nazis, this was more than sport - it was a stage to prove their power and supremacy to the occupied people.

The city was under Nazi occupation. On September 19, 1941, the Wehrmacht had marched into Kiev. Within two days special units killed almost 34,000 Jews. 630,000 Soviet soldiers became prisoners of war. The deportation of the Jews and the transport of Ukrainian forced laborers to Germany were in full swing. Kiev was starving. Under these circumstances, football was out of the question. But neither side had completely forgotten about it.

The streets were filled with fear, hunger, and death. Tens of thousands had been killed. Hundreds of thousands were prisoners. People disappeared every day. Under such brutality, football should have been unthinkable - yet the Germans used it to stage a picture of “normal life”, to hide their cruelty behind sport. But FC Start had another idea.

Behind the bakery uniforms and forced-labour rations were world-class players who still carried pride, memory, and identity. They were not just playing football - they were refusing to break. Every pass, every tackle, every goal was a wordless protest: we are still here.

No one in that stadium knew what would follow if the Ukrainians dared to win. Even so, they played. This documentary tells the story of that match - a match where the score was not just about goals, but about dignity, courage, and the quiet power of resistance.

Stein Morten Lund, 25th August 2025

Additional information
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The Christmas Truce - What really happened in the trenches in 1914?
In December 1914, the First World War was only months old, but the trenches were already filled with cold, fear, and death. Then something unexpected happened. On Christmas Eve, soldiers from both sides - British and German - slowly climbed out of their muddy trenches with empty hands. Instead of bullets, they shared greetings, songs, drinks, food… and a football.

On frozen ground between barbed wire and shell holes, enemies passed a ball and laughed together. For a brief moment, they were not soldiers - just young men far from home. The war did not end that day, but the Christmas Truce became a lasting reminder: even in the darkest places on earth, humanity can break through.