Chelsea legends galore at Stamford Bridge for Game4Ukraine

A crowd of over 30,000, plus the many thousands more watching on Sky Sports, were treated to a fairly entertaining charity match at Stamford Bridge yesterday, as “Team Shevchenko” (Blue, managed by Emma Hayes) and “Team Zinchenko” (yellow, managed by Arsène Wenger) played out a 2-2 draw while raising money for charity in the Game4Ukraine.

Clarence Seedorf scored the pick of the goals — as Clarence Seedorf so often did during his legendary career — but former Chelsea defender William Gallas was also on the scoresheet for the Bleus to cancel out strikes by Darijo Srna and Mark Noble.

In addition to Sheva and Gallas, the Blues also featured ... [deep breath] ... Michael Essien, Gianfranco Zola, Joe Cole, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, Carlo Cudicini, Samuel Eto’o, Christian Panucci, Claire Rafferty, Carly Telford, and the two pictured up top, Petr Čech and Claude Makélélé. Katie Chapman turned out for the Yellows. (And many, many more of a non-Chelsea persuasion also played, for both sides.) And in a rare occurrence for such games, and to highlight its importance, currently active players Mykhailo Mudryk and Oleksandr Zinchenko featured as well. (Mudryk hit the crossbar with a spectacular attempt, even.)

Of course, the main aim of the night was to raise money, support, and awareness, and that was indeed accomplished as well. (On a sidenote, still waiting for the British government to release the funds from Chelsea’s sale to create the charity that’s supposed to be created to benefit the victims of the war in Ukraine.)