LAFC’s Marlon Santos thriving after ‘terrifying’ ordeal in Ukraine

Rumors of invasion and imminent war first reached Marlon Santos when the Brazilian footballer returned to Kyiv following a vacation in December 2021.

Then reality set in early in the morning Feb. 24, 2022.

“My mother-in-law heard the bombs and woke me and my wife,” said the 29-year-old Santos, who signed as a free agent with the Los Angeles Football Club in September.

When the defender agreed to play for FC Shakhtar Donetsk three years ago, he joined a displaced Ukrainian Premier League superpower from the coal-rich Donbas region in the easternmost part of the country.

With the Russo-Ukrainian conflict raging since 2014, Shakhtar had departed a war-torn Donetsk, taking refuge in cities such as Kharkiv and Lviv before settling into Kyiv’s Olympic Stadium – the home of their main rival, Dynamo Kyiv – by the time Marlon arrived.

The situation on the ground wasn’t normal, Santos said, but it was stable enough for him to bring his pregnant wife and two young children over from Italy after signing a five-year contract.

Tagging along with his head coach for three seasons in Serie A at Sassuolo, Italian Roberto De Zerbi, the Brazilian center back had offers to go elsewhere. But he and De Zerbi had agreed that wherever the coach went, the player would too.

Eyeing UEFA Champions League competition and the next chapter of his career, Marlon came to Shakhtar a month after De Zerbi was officially announced as head coach without the slightest sense that Russia would soon launch the largest ground war in Europe since World War II.

Santos’ account of the days immediately following the invasion is harrowing. As his family hurriedly gathered their things, he and fellow Brazilian teammate Júnior Moraes were tasked with rounding up Shakhtar players nearby before rendezvousing at a hotel in Kyiv.

“It was something very terrifying,” Santos said of their four-day lockdown in a conference room they called “the bunker,” where players joined their families, from infants to grandparents, alongside agents and representatives of the team.

“Everyone had someone visiting with them,” he recalled. “The complicated part was that on the first day we had food and water. Second day, the supply becomes very low. The third day, it was even lower, so very little. We had people who needed food for children, diapers, essential things.”

Santos credited Moraes with venturing out and risking his life to get what people needed before the Brazilian embassy called on the fourth day.

“It was a very tense, tense moment,” Marlon said. “Terrifying. We were sad about the war. For the people who lost their lives and for those that are still there. It’s just the vanity of power that makes us humans do things that are unacceptable.”

Throughout the eight months Marlon spent in Ukraine, he felt the people there had strong personalities and character.

“In my short time, I can describe it without a doubt,” he said, “good people.”

That perspective was colored by his challenging and humbling youth near Rio de Janeiro, where, as a budding professional soccer player, Marlon grew up fast and helped sustain the people he cared for.

Raised directly across from a shantytown in Duque de Caxias, a city in the Rio metro area, Santos found his working-class roots meant fending for himself at times.

“In favelas, people are always trying to have an edge and to have an advantage over you,” he said, “so you have to be kind of on your toes and be able to manage yourself.”

A product of Fluminense FC, Santos took the prodigious step of leaving Brazil for Europe in 2016, when, at the age of 20, he was loaned to FC Barcelona.

“Going to Barcelona was just a new reality,” he said, “because you get to see healthy people.”

By his next birthday, Santos appeared as a substitute for Barcelona’s first team in a Champions League group stage match, replacing iconic Spanish defender Gerard Piqué.

Eight years later, with a bevy of life and career lessons to lean on, the time spent in Ukraine tested his desire to compete again.

Living in Brazil after FIFA, the world’s governing body for soccer, allowed players affected by the war to seek a release from their contracts, Santos struggled to physically and mentally prepare to play.

“Very difficult,” said Santos, whose young boys still mention Kyiv and the war when they see helicopters or hear fireworks popping off.

After finding his bearings and competing for a season in Italy, Santos reunited with the family-like club of his adolescence, winning the Copa Libertadores (South America’s annual continental club tournament) for Fluminense in 2023.

“I was very happy that I could be with my friends and family after being eight years away from home, with my experience in Ukraine, and returning to the club where I began my career and began my story,” he said. “And also to win with my team, that’s something you very much desire. It was a very extraordinary experience for me.”

When LAFC and Major League Soccer came calling on the unsigned center back this summer, the Black & Gold needed defensive depth in the wake of an injury to Colombian Jesus Murillo.

The first thing Santos did upon arriving in L.A. was ask the staff to take him around the city so he could get a sense for the neighborhoods and the people who call them home.

“It’s this kind of player and character that you can tell right away is going to fit into our group,” LAFC midfielder Ilie Sanchez said. “I’m so happy for him personally but also for the team because I think he can add so much help to the group we already have.”