Sergei has always been athletic and healthy. He’s passionate about football and has played in regional championship. And Samara, the city where he grew up, is one of the World Cup 2018 cities. The atmosphere in Samara, the new stadium, the upcoming arrival of thousands of foreign fans… all this only made Sergei more excited about football. Also, a couple of years ago, he decided to dedicate most of his spare time to freestyle wrestling.

Sergei: “From 7 to 12, I’d spend the whole day playing football. I also represented my school and my region at tournaments. At 12, I dreamed of becoming a football star. But soon wrestling became my number one sport—we always used to use football under wrestling rules as a warmup. During summer, when there was no wrestling training going on, I would go to the football field and recall what I learned at the Krylia Sovetov football club.”

But now Sergei can’t play football or wrestle. For half a year now, he has been treated for one of the most malignant kinds of leukaemia at the Dmitry Rogachev Centre for Paediatric Haematology in Moscow. Chemotherapy alone won’t be enough to cure him—the risk of a relapse is too high. His doctors immediately decided to put him down for a bone marrow transplant. A genetically compatible donor was found in Germany, and preparations are underway for this challenging operation. This very expensive procedure will cost €23,000. This isn’t a trial Sergei’s family can overcome on their own. In hospital, Sergei is being looked after by his older sister. Sergei’s father can’t be with him in hospital—he’s busy taking care of his other son—and Sergei’s mother has passed away.

Let’s help this young footballer and wrestler win the greatest victory of his life and defeat the disease. Sergei still has so much ahead of him, and it is within our power to give him the gift of hope for a happy future.