Exclusive: Todd Boehly greenlights Football for Ukraine to play an American-style all-star match at Chelsea | OneFootball

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helsea have offered to host a fund-raising match for Ukraine at Stamford Bridge in August.

Co-owner Todd Boehly has provisionally agreed to allow Football for Ukraine to play an American-style all-star match that would feature Chelsea’s Mykhailo Mudryk and Arsenal’s Oleksandr Zinchenko.

The exact make-up of the teams involved is still being decided but it is hoped the match would attract big-name players from the Premier League and around the world.

Talks have taken place for the game to be played in the first two weeks of August, during pre-season and before the new Premier League campaign kicks off on August 12.

Everton’s Vitaliy Mykolenko and Bournemouth’s Illya Zabarnyi, two other Ukrainian players in England, would also be involved.

Zinchenko is the founder of the charity Football for Ukraine, which was set up alongside his business partner Artemy Ryabov after Russia invaded Ukraine last year. Former Chelsea striker and Ukraine legend Andriy Shevchenko is also heavily involved in the project.

Football for Ukraine hopes to organise a series of football events to raise funds and awareness about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Chelsea, the Arsenal Foundation, Puma, Nike and Common Goal support the charity, which helps displaced refugees in the UK and sends supplies back home.

Meanwhile, Chelsea have also verbally agreed to travel to Ukraine to face Shakhtar Donetsk in a potential homecoming match at the Donbass Arena should the conflict end.

Shakhtar president Rinat Akhmetov first coined the idea for Chelsea to play at their 52,000-capacity stadium, which has been closed since 2014, during the deal that saw Mudryk join Cheslea for £89million in January.

Akhmetov also said he would donate around £20m of the transfer fee that Shakhtar received Mudryk to soldiers fighting the invasion.