The Death Match: Football, Resistance, and Myth in Nazi-Occupied Ukraine | Part Two
It Was What It Was : The Football History Podcast
The Overlap
4.9 • 667 Ratings
🗓️ 25 July 2025
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome to It Was What It Was, the football history podcast. In this episode, co-hosts Rob Draper and Jonathan Wilson bring their second and final part of their series on the Death Match, one of the most mythologized football games of all time.
Occurring in Nazi-occupied Kyiv, Ukraine, this match between Start, a team formed mostly of former Dinamo Kiev players, and Flakelf, a Luftwaffe team, has become a symbol of resistance. The hosts discuss the brutal context of the occupation, the complex legacies of the players, and the role football played in these extraordinary historical circumstances. Jonathan Wilson critically examines how much of the narrative is based on verifiable facts and how much may have been post-war Soviet propaganda.
This episode provides a nuanced understanding of how football intersected with geopolitics, resistance, and national identity during one of history's darkest periods.
00:00 Introduction to the Death Match Series
01:27 Historical Context: Nazi Occupation and Football
02:26 The Rise of Team Start
03:07 Early Matches and Growing Tensions
04:21 Embarrassing Defeats for Axis Teams
05:28 Public Perception and Propaganda
06:29 The Turning Point: German Concerns
14:13 The First Clash with Flakelf
18:05 Setting the Stage for the Death Match
26:06 The Referee's Influence and Game Dynamics
27:10 Halftime Tensions and Orders to Lose
28:39 Second Half and Controversial Moments
32:35 Post-Match Arrests and Interrogations
35:50 Life in the Prison Camp
43:10 Escape and Kyiv's Liberation
44:33 Legacy and Mythology of the Death Match
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The second half was an even tough fight. |
| 0:10.1 | Trucevic got it especially badly. |
| 0:12.2 | They scored two more against us and we scored the same against them. |
| 0:15.6 | And we held on to the win, 5'3, but we're pretty exhausted by the end. |
| 0:20.0 | With our malnutrition, playing serious matches every other day is pure torture. |
| 0:25.1 | Welcome to It Was What It Was with me, Rob Draper, and with Jonathan Wilson. |
| 0:29.2 | We're in part two of our two-part series on the Death Match, |
| 0:34.6 | one of the most mythologised football matches of all time that happened in occupied Ukraine under Nazi occupation. |
| 0:42.3 | It is partly, the germ of this story is part of the inspiration for the famous film Escape to Victory. |
| 0:48.3 | It's characterized as resistance against collaborators. |
| 0:52.3 | That was Makkah Honoreenko, the former Dinamo Kiev winger, |
| 0:57.0 | talking about this game, where effectively what is becoming known as a resistance side |
| 1:03.5 | is going to embarrass their sort of Nazi occupiers. |
| 1:07.6 | Now, Jonathan, you're going to pick apart how much that is true, how much of that is |
| 1:11.5 | myth, but it is certainly true that this match has been characterised in this way. As I say, |
| 1:17.3 | escape to victory is very loosely based on it, and it does have a strong place in football history |
| 1:23.7 | and in Ukrainian national history, doesn't it? Yes. I mean, so we left it last time with start, this team base at the bakery run by Yusup Korduk, |
| 1:36.3 | who was a Moravian check who claimed Foxyatist, wrongly, having been left behind the end of the |
| 1:41.2 | First World War. |
| 1:42.1 | And he's managed to gather together a load of Donamo players, now Kiev players, |
| 1:47.0 | at his bakery, three locomotive players as well. |
| 1:49.5 | They put together this team called Start. |
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