Serhii Palkin wasn’t sure whether Arda Turan, having played for Barcelona and Atlético Madrid, would be up for taking over as manager of Shakhtar Donetsk last May. The former Turkey forward had just left his first managerial post after two years at Eyüpspor in his homeland. But could he be tempted to join a club that last played at the Donbas Arena in 2014 owing to the war with Russia and has hosted its European matches in seven cities since being exiled?
“Arda is a special guy,” says Palkin, Shakhtar’s chief executive since 2004. “For him to be a coach in Turkey is being in his comfort zone. He doesn’t want to be there. When I called him, he said: ‘I want to come, I want to come. I want to sign immediately.’ He doesn’t care about the war, he’s not afraid, nothing. And he’s always using a lot of energy. You will see on Thursday evening. He’s running on the line, I think three to four kilometres every game.”
If Crystal Palace’s players are feeling the rigours of a marathon season, they should spare a thought for their Conference League semi-final opponents, Shakhtar, who host Thursday’s first leg in Krakow. Turan’s side played their first Europa League qualifier in Ljubljana on 10 July and have since negotiated 15 matches in Europe, dropping into the Conference League after losing on penalties against Panathinaikos.
What makes Shakhtar’s story even more incredible is that “home” fixtures in Europe since that opening game in Slovenia have been at Krakow’s Henryk Reyman Municipal Stadium, almost 1,000 miles from Donetsk and a 10-hour drive from their training base in Kyiv. With air travel possible for Shakhtar only after they have left Ukraine, their journey to Alkmaar for the second leg of their quarter-final against the Dutch side AZ lasted almost 24 hours.
“If you bring even [Pep] Guardiola to Shakhtar now, or [José] Mourinho, or Jürgen Klopp, I don’t know how he will manage this situation,” says the sporting director, Dario Srna, who played in Shakhtar’s 2009 Europa League triumph. “Believe me, it’s just mentality. For example, after the Palace game, we will go by bus for four hours to one city in Poland, and after that we have to train, and we will travel at four o’clock in the morning directly to Kyiv.
“We will arrive the next day, I think, 4pm in Kyiv. Saturday training, Sunday evening derby against Dynamo Kyiv, and immediately after the game at Dynamo Kyiv, we are travelling the same way, but just back, and going to London. This is one case and it’s been like this for four years.”
It hasn’t stopped Shakhtar from racking up 59 goals in 25 league matches under Turan as they close in on the title after finishing third last season. Shakhtar reached the last four of the Europa League in 2016 and 2020 before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 changed everything. Most of the club’s foreign players departed after special Fifa regulations allowed them to leave for free. Shakhtar failed with a claim for up to €50m in compensation and were forced to start from scratch.
“We lost 14 players and coaching staff,” Srna says. “Fifa killed us, and we started to build a new Ukrainian team. In the first season, we played with 99% of Ukrainian players. The year after that, we started to buy Brazilians again.”
There are 14 Brazilians on the books, including the exciting teenage playmaker Isaque Silva who arrived from Fluminense in August and is a key part of Turan’s side. Shakhtar previously nurtured players such as Fernandinho and Willian, and the sale of Kevin to Fulham for a club record £35m last summer meant the policy paid off once more.
“We believe in our model,” says Palkin. “Yes, we lost our home, but we didn’t lose our identity. We have been dealing with Brazilian players for more than 20 years. And for all these years, we have big, big trust. Because they understand Shakhtar is a bridge to go to top European leagues. When we are negotiating with them even today, we are not selling them comfort because everybody understands the world.”
Several players from Shakhtar’s academy left Ukraine after the full-scale invasion. But Shakhtar have also had success developing local talent to sell on, with the central midfielders Viktor Tsukanov and Denys Smetana tipped to follow in the footsteps of Georgiy Sudakov and Mykhailo Mudryk. First Srna is hoping they can help Shakhtar get to the final of a competition he wasn’t sure about at first.
“When we start to play in the Conference League, I said: ‘I don’t like the Conference League,’” he says with a laugh. “But when you arrive in the semi-final, you realise that you did an amazing job. Not just for our players, for our country. The whole of Ukraine will watch our game on Thursday. Because it’s something positive in our country.”
Srna says Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be asked to attend the final in Leipzig should Shakhtar get past Palace in a tiePalkin regards as another opportunity to remind the world what is happening in his country.
“We have many, many years of war and people living in Europe, living in the USA and the rest of the world, maybe they’re a little bit tired about this war,” he says. “But this is a tricky situation because when we are playing our European competitions, we are always trying to mention what’s going on in Ukraine, because it’s not possible to ignore or to be tired. This is our key point. We need to resolve this situation all together and we need to conclude peace as soon as possible, but a fair peace.”