Shakhtar Donetsk’s remarkable European odyssey brings them to the Conference League semi-finals, where they face Premier League opposition in Crystal Palace. The first leg takes place on Thursday in Krakow, where Shakhtar host despite being the nominal home side. The Ukrainian club’s campaign began with a Europa League qualifier on 10 July in Ljubljana, and they have since navigated 15 European matches, including a penalty shootout defeat by Panathinaikos that dropped them into the Conference League.
Manager Arda Turan, appointed last May after leaving Eyüpspor in Turkey, was an unexpected choice. Chief executive Serhii Palkin said: “Arda is a special guy. For him to be a coach in Turkey is being in his comfort zone. He doesn’t want to be there. He’s not afraid of the war. And he uses a lot of energy – you will see on Thursday evening. He’s running on the line, I think three to four kilometres every game.”
Shakhtar’s travel demands are immense. Since their opening fixture, “home” matches have been played at Krakow’s Henryk Reyman Municipal Stadium, nearly 1,000 miles from Donetsk and a ten-hour drive from their Kyiv training base. A trip to Alkmaar for their quarter-final second leg against AZ lasted almost 24 hours. Sporting director Dario Srna described the relentless schedule: “After the Palace game, we will go by bus for four hours to one city in Poland, then travel at 4am directly to Kyiv. We arrive at 4pm, train Saturday, then Sunday evening derby against Dynamo Kyiv, and immediately after that we travel back to go to London. This has been like this for four years.”
The full-scale Russian invasion in 2022 changed everything. Special Fifa regulations allowed foreign players to leave on free transfers, and Shakhtar lost 14 players and coaching staff. “Fifa killed us,” Srna said. “We started to build a new Ukrainian team. In the first season, we played with 99% Ukrainian players. The year after, we started to buy Brazilians again.”
There are now 14 Brazilians in the squad, including teenage playmaker Isaque Silva from Fluminense. The club’s model of nurturing Brazilian talent, previously seen with Fernandinho and Willian, continues to pay off; last summer Kevin joined Fulham for a club-record £35m. “We believe in our model,” Palkin said. “We lost our home, but not our identity. Brazilian players understand that Shakhtar is a bridge to top European leagues.” Meanwhile, local academy products such as Viktor Tsukanov and Denys Smetana are tipped to follow Georgiy Sudakov and Mykhailo Mudryk in moving on for significant fees.
