It was a noise the previous international football celebrity says immediately carried his “head plus body” back to their native Croatia, where he lived as an eight-year-old when war broke out in what has been then Yugoslavia.
So when their football club Shakhtar Donetsk was forced to depart Kyiv, the city that had been one of the team’s many temporary bases given that 2014, at the start of Russia’s invasion, it had been unfortunately a situation Srna was all too familiar with.
The former Croatian global is just 39 years old, but he has already experienced three wars in his life; very first in Croatia within the early 1990s, then in 2014 in Ukraine’s Donbas region — Shakhtar’s true home — and now across much of all of those other country.
“It was not a nice memory, ” Srna, who is Shakhtar Donetsk’s director of soccer, says of their childhood. “When I started to forget about that a little bit and enjoy my entire life, I heard the sirens again.
“I’m strong. I want to become strong, but occasionally is difficult because of everything, because you lost your home twice. In this moment, it’s important to be positive, to be strong and also to give a positive impression to everyone. inch
Srna — who, along with the rest of the team, managed to escape Ukraine the day after Russian federation began its intrusion — has found his strength in helping those most affected by the war within Ukraine.
Shakhtar, where Srna is a club legend after playing meant for 15 seasons, has been homeless for almost eight years now, ever since fighting broke out there between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian pushes in 2014.
After heading off from professional soccer in 2019, Srna took up the function of assistant coach at Shakhtar before becoming the club’s director of football.
He or she is acutely aware that will his plight and that of the rest of the team is nothing compared to those fighting at the front line and has been helping to guide the club’s hard work in providing support for Ukrainian soldiers and refugees.
Shakhtar happens to be in the middle of an European tour — the particular ‘Global Tour meant for Peace’ — where they will play towards a number of clubs to boost money for those swept up in the war.
“We can not compare ourselves using the people of Ukraine, ” Srna tells CNN Sport’s Don Riddell. “But we are a football group, we are football players and we are trying to take action we know how to do — and that is enjoy football.
“All the income all of us receive from seat tickets and from sponsors for these games we have been sending to Ukraine for the children, for those who are in a very difficult situation.
“Together with the [club] president, Rinat Akhmetov — who is still there helping Ukrainian citizens every day in different kind of ways, medicaments and everything — we are now like one family and we have been trying to do good to help the residents of Ukraine nowadays in this difficult scenario. ”
Before the opening suit of the tour, the 1-0 defeat simply by Greek giant Olympiacos, Shakhtar’s players wore t-shirts featuring what they are called of the places in Ukraine that had been the majority of affected by Russia’s approaches, including Mariupol plus Irpin.
Shakhtar has considering that played games towards Turkish clubs Fenerbahce and Antalyaspor and Polish side Lechia Gdansk, and has a match against Croatia’s Hajduk Split scheduled for May one
There is a particularly moving second in the match against Gdansk earlier this particular month when Dmytro Keda, a 12-year-old Ukrainian refugee, emerged on as a last-minute substitute and scored the winning goal.
Keda, who fled his hometown of Mariupol in Ukraine after working three weeks holed up as Russian pushes bombarded the city, had been mobbed by gamers from both teams and was held aloft in celebration.
Shakhtar’s head coach Roberto De Zerbi described after the match that the decision to allow Keda come on and score was “spontaneous. ”
So far, Shakhtar states the tour has raised 8. 2 million Ukrainian hryvnia ($271, 000), along with around a quarter from the total already getting transferred to Akhmetov’s foundation in Ukraine.
“When I asked the Ukrainian players: ‘Are a person ready to play, for example , every second game, every third online game? ‘” Srna recalls. “‘The more games [we play], the greater money for Ukrainians. ‘
“They responded to myself: ‘Darijo, we are Ukrainians. We can do everything. ‘ And for myself, that was a moment I will never forget.
“But this is the Ukrainian people. I arrived 19 years ago plus they received me such as part of their family members from the first day time and me plus my family will never forget about that. I’ve resided more in Ukraine than in Croatia. This really is my home. Today I’m Ukrainian plus everything we can do for them in these challenging moments, we will do. Believe me.
“I feel proud that I lived there, that I performed there, that I fulfilled them because they are individuals with a huge heart, always positive. They didn’t attack anyone. They will didn’t want to take one centimeter associated with another country’s land and they’re heroes today. I’m so proud of them and me personally, I will be with them till the end. ”
Srna clarifies that the war has been particularly difficult for that younger members associated with Shaktar’s squad in order to process.
Among them could be the former captain of a club in Mariupol, who was invited to try out with the team on their tour after he or she “lost everything” throughout Russia’s ongoing bombardment of the city.
“First of, it’s good they are young, ” Srna says. “In front of them, there is a long career and this can just make them more powerful. I will say one thing: the most beautiful period of Croatia were the ten or 15 years after the war.
“I believe that Ukraine is going to be united until the end and after the battle we will be altogether. We will drink together, we are going to smile together, we are going to cry together. The most important thing will be peace with this moment. ”
On Wednesday the Ukrainian Premier League 2021-22 time of year was suspended due to the ongoing war. Shakhtar Donetsk and Dynamo Kiev were in first and 2nd place on February twenty-four, and will therefore qualify for next season’s Champions League.