Fiorentina’s friendly against the Japanese University representative team was a moist fart but it wasn’t the only game going on this morning. Elsewhere, Ukrainian team Polissya held off a rally from Paksi and sealed a win with a late goal to eliminate the Hungarian side and advance to the Conference League playoff. The away leg is a week away (21 August 2025) and the return leg is a week after that (28 August 2025). If you’re anything like me, you hadn’t heard of these guys until a couple weeks ago,
so here’s my Idiot’s Guide to Polissya (and please emphasize that first word).
Who are these guys?
FC Polissya Zhytomyr is the club’s full name (Футбольний клуб Полісся Житомир if you speak Ukrainian), but you can just call it Polissya. The colors are green and black. The crest is pretty sick and features a very stylish wolf (?) and is, as you might’ve guessed, nicknamed the Wolves (Vovky in Ukrainian) or the Green (Zeleno-zhovtyy). Polissya, by the way, has nothing to do with the police; it’s a toponym derived from the Polesie region that historically encompassed parts of eastern Poland, Belarus, and western Ukraine.
Okay, so the team name is Polissya. What’s Zhytomyr?
Zhytomyr is a city of about 260,000 people and serves as the administrative capital of the eponymous region. It’s located in the northwest part of Ukraine, 140 km/87 mi west of Kyiv. That makes it about 1950 km/1215 mi from Firenze. It was supposedly founded in 884 and first appears in the historical record in 1240. If you want a little more Serie A connection, Zhytomyr is the hometown of Genoa midfielder Ruslan Malinovskyi.
If you’re into the historical side of things, Zhytomyr’s got plenty to keep you occupied. It’s home to a very large ethnic Polish population and thus a large Catholic presence, with Saint Sophia serving as the seat of the diocese instead of Kyiv since 1998. It was also briefly the capital of the Ukrainian People’s Republic before being conquered by Soviet forces in 1921.
More recently, the city’s been targeted by Russian shelling during the invasion of Ukraine. In February 2022, both the military and civilian airports were shelled, and missile strikes have continued intermittently since. Zhytomyr is home to an armored vehicle and tank factory that’s also been attacked. Over the past 3+ years, several civilians have died in the attacks, but the city’s location means it’s relatively safe.
Geographically, Zhytomyr lies at the confluence of the Teteriv and Huiva rivers, notable for being surrounded by lush forests (although that’s somewhat less the case nowadays). Unsurprisingly, it’s a bit cooler than Firenze at the moment, but not by as much as you might think.
Zhytomyr’s economy is based around manufacturing. Besides the aforementioned tank factory, it also boasts one of the largest candy factories in Ukraine, as well as various other enterprises. It’s got a couple universities and some cultural/tourism sectors but from what I can tell, it’s a pretty blue collar town.
Let’s focus on Polissya here. What’s the story?
Polissya was originally founded in 1959 as an amateur club and bounced around the regional leagues rather anonymously before folding in 2005. It wasn’t out of action for more than a couple months, though, as a couple new teams filled the void. They eventually combined but operated only as a youth and amateur team until 2015, when the club applied for admission to the Ukrainian second division, eventually earning promotion to the top tier in 2023 for the first time in club history.
Since 2021, Polissya’s been bankrolled by discount store chain ATB-Market, which provided the cash injection necessary to make the jump to the top tier. The big money allowed the team to win the second division in 2021-2022 and then finish a very respectable 5th in 2022-2023. Polissya got knocked out in the second round of Conference League qualifying against Slovenian powerhouse Olimpija, but that didn’t stop it from finishing 4th last year, earning a slot into the third round of Conference League qualifying. That’s where the Wolves beat Paksi, and here we are.
Okay, cool. But who are these guys? Who’s the coach? Who’re the players? How do they look now?
The current coach is 43-year-old midfielder Ruslan Rotan. A former midfielder from the Dnipro Dnipopetrovsk academy, he spent a couple years with Dinamo Kyiv before returning to his boyhood club for 11 years. He spent a season with Slavia Prague before heading home again and retiring in 2018. Along the way, he earned exactly 100 caps for Ukraine, scoring 8 goals and popping up at the 2006 World Cup (he didn’t make it off the bench in the quarterfinal defeat to Italy) and the 2012 and 2016 Euros, where he was a bit part player but the team captain.
Since retiring, he’s led the U21 and U23 sides for Ukraine, as well as leading the senior side in the dead rubber against England at Wembley in 2022 after Oleksandr Petrakov stepped down. He joined Polissya in January 2025, replacing his former Ukraine U23 assistant Imur Ashur, and led the Wolves to their highest-ever finish.
Unless you’ve got an interest in the UPL, you probably don’t know any of Polissnya’s players. Winger Béni Makouana has 13 caps for the Republic of the Congo at the age of 22, which is fairly impressive. Leftback Bogdan Mykhaylichenko’s got 10 Ukraine caps and winger Aleksey Gutsulak has 2 goals in 9 at international level. There are the obligatory itinerant Brazilians and a few other foreigners, but this is definitely a Ukraine-centric squad.
The domestic season has already started for Polissya. They knocked off Karpaty Lviv in the season opener before falling at home to Kolos Kovalivka. They take on Cherkasy this weekend but then don’t have another domestic tie until the final day of August when they travel to take on Dinamo Kyiv. Before knocking out Paksi, Polissya also eliminated Andorran giants Santa Coloma in the second round of qualifying and is thus much farther into the competitive part of its season.
It’s worth mentioning that these midweek fixtures won’t be as hard on them as they are on Fiorentina: the Viola will travel straight from Zhytomyr to Cagliari for the Serie A opener, then back to the Stadio Artemio Franchi, where Polissya and then Torino will visit.
Speaking of long trips, what’s Polissya’s stadium like?
Polissya plays at the Tsentralnyi stadion (Central Stadium) in dowtown Zhytomyr. Built in 1959, it originally seated 21,928 but has been in pretty dire shape for quite some time and is thus reduced to a capacity of under 6000 after several stands that were badly in need of renovation were demolished a few years ago, so expect a fairly small crowd in the first leg.
That’s not just because the Tsentralnyi stadion is small, though. Polissya played its “home” game against Paksi in the Futbal Tatran Arena in Prešov, Slovakia, due to safety concerns about the ongoing war. It’s considerably closer for Viola fans trying to travel, but the 6500 capacity arena is 715 km/445 mi from Zhytomyr, so the atmosphere might not be what a European game ought to be.
What I really need is some trivia to impress my friends with while I watch this one.
I’ve got 3 for you. The first is illustrative of the financial level Polissya operates on. The club’s record signing is Facundo Batista, who joined for €1.75 million last year and departed again at the start of the season. The record sale is Artem Smolyakov, who joined MLS outfit LAFC last February for €2 million.
Okay, that’s pretty boring. How about some cross-sport pollination? Polissya signed heavyweight unified world champion boxer Oleksandr Usyk to a 1-year contract in 2023. He only got 15 minutes in a friendly and didn’t look like a professional player, but the highlights are fun because 1) he’s twice as wide as anyone else on the pitch, and 2) it’s a good reminder of just how talented these guys are that a world champion athlete looks so awkward among them.
Finally, Boris Krushynskyi currently has 71 senior appearances with Polissya. Assuming he plays against Cherkasy this weekend and features in both Conference League playoff games, he’ll surpass Vasyl Grytsuk (73) as the all-time appearance leader for the club since it turned professional. Krushynskyi is 23 and, despite being listed as a central midfielder, has played pretty much everywhere except up top and in goal.
For context’s sake, 7 current Viola players—Christian Kouamé, Rolando Mandragora, Jonathan Ikoné, Luca Ranieri, Dodô, Lucas Beltrán, Antonín Barák, and Fabiano Parisi—have more appearances for the club than Krushynskyi. It just goes to show you the different scales you get even at the professional level. This is why I genuinely love the Conference League, by the way. You don’t get situations like this in the Champions League, and it’s all much more relatable to the average Sunday league stalwart than the very top tier.
Okay, that’s all I’ve got on Polissya. Because I don’t speak any Ukrainian, I had some trouble assembling this piece, so if you’ve got any corrections or additions, please drop them in the comments and, if everything checks out, I’ll update the article. I’ll publish a tactical preview a few days before the actual game.
