It is time for set-piece training at LNZ Cherkasy’s smart, shiny training facility. “Arsenal!” one player says with a laugh as the grappling at a corner begins, the joke spreading among others clustered in the six-yard box. That is a level everyone here must aspire to but they are edging nearer. This week a club from what used to be one of Ukraine’s football backwaters will make its European debut in a wartime success story with few modern-day parallels.
“We are making history,” the LNZ striker Mark Assinor says after the jostling has stopped and the session wound down. “But there’s been a change in mentality here and I think this is only a starting point for the club.”
On Thursday they will face the Belgian side Gent, old hands on this stage, in the second qualifying round of the Conference League. LNZ earned that right last season by finishing runners-up in Ukraine’s top flight: a phenomenal achievement given they were playing fourth-tier football as recently as 2021 and only turned professional the previous year.
One of the first waymarkers after a seemingly endless six-mile drive across the Dnipro river is a billboard reading: “Cherkasy, football centre of Ukraine” in LNZ’s striking purple tone. The country’s geographical heart sits a stone’s throw from here but the local club is now pulsing with ambition and belief. LNZ were top of the league at the halfway point in 2025-26, ultimately finishing behind the might of Shakhtar Donetsk, but something remarkable has stirred nonetheless.
“No one expected anything from us,” says Vasyl Kayuk. He is sitting in a restaurant opposite the club’s city-centre headquarters, helping polish off a post-training buffet laid on for the team. At 26, Kayuk is the youngest chief executive in Ukrainian top-flight history. “The biggest motivation and advantage is that you are young and nobody believes in you.” Along with a similarly fresh, energetic staff he is determined for LNZ to break a mould.
“The city never had anything similar to this,” Kayuk says. LNZ have existed for 20 years but, in a football scene severely hampered since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, are a rare example of a club growing at pace. Their owners, a locally based agribusiness from which the club takes its name, have sown the seeds with purposeful investment despite the turmoil that continues nationally and the aim is to build a long-term success story that acts as a beacon for Ukraine.
“We always say that we are not sprinters, we are marathon runners,” he says. “We want to build our club and become stable.” LNZ exceeded every projection in only their third top-flight season, having finished 12th the year before. When they caused shockwaves with a 4-1 win at Shakhtar last October, Assinor among the scorers, an improbable title charge was on. A run of draws later in the campaign meant Shakhtar pulled away but foundations are being laid to ensure LNZ remain serious contenders.
A rare older face in such a youthful setup, their manager Vitaliy Ponomaryov applies the words of caution. “I don’t think that, if we celebrate this success today, it will be of use to us tomorrow,” he says, back at the training ground. “I literally told the players today that we have to forget everything, set new goals, and continue to grow.”
In some ways the 52-year-old Ponomaryov is from the Ukrainian old school: a straight-talking and no-frills coach not given to effusiveness. But he has hidden depths, including a spell officiating in top-flight games as an assistant referee during the 2000s. Since moving last year from Rukh Lviv, where he worked with Kayuk, he has created a flexible, high-functioning side comfortable playing in a mixture of styles.
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“It had been difficult the previous season but he has come in and given us a winning mentality,” Assinor says. The Ghanaian was a dazzling find in 2024 after stints with obscure outfits in Poland and Slovakia, perfectly embodying a scouting setup that is not geared towards paying huge fees. “When we realised we had a chance of achieving something, everyone started to believe. He motivated everybody when he came in.”
LNZ will host the first leg against Gent in the Polish city Plock. Ukrainian sides are still required to play their European games abroad because of the precarious situation at home. It touches every part of life even at a vibrant, forward-looking club like this. In the training ground gym one of the physios, Artur Pohorilyi, describes his time as a war medic and how he survived a blast near Izyum in 2023. A club doctor, Roman Mishchenko, spends time working at a hospital for injured soldiers in Cherkasy to which LNZ also donate money. Mishchenko also works in Ukraine’s sophisticated system for amputee footballers.
A few miles along the river, in a repurposed Soviet-era sanatorium, LNZ’s academy base nurtures the stars of tomorrow. The under-16s coach, Alexei Bulgakov, worked for the now-dormant FC Mariupol before Russia attacked and took the city. He managed to escape but the cost, his home destroyed and separation from his family, was unimaginable. Bulgakov speaks vividly about a life growing up steeped in local football, describing the games between 52 teams of workers at Mariupol’s huge Ilyich steel plant.
Among his current charges are a number of youngsters from illegally occupied parts of Ukraine. Some of their parents remain in those places. “We speak to each other, talk about sights and buildings in our cities, and expect that some day we will be able to return,” he says. “The club understands how hard things are for young players from these areas, and it’s very happy to give them opportunities.”
They hope for futures in a rapidly expanding LNZ setup. The training ground is new and impressive by Ukrainian standards but considered to be only 35% complete, with three more pitches, an indoor dome and new stadium planned for the site. That process may take five more years. Crowds at their ageing city-centre ground trebled last season to more than 2,000, which is no small feat in wartime. Children below 14 can attend for free and a matchgoing culture is being fostered around a city finally making its name in elite football.
“We want to make this city purple, our special colour,” Kayuk says. “This club is for our people but we also want Ukrainians to associate themselves with us, with the country’s centre. And that when they think of Cherkasy, they think of football. We want to become a real power in our league.” A tussle with Arsenal’s corner specialists still looks some way off, but Gent could be the first foreign opponents to feel the purple wave’s emerging force.
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