‘OUR PLAYERS ARE HEROES. THEY HAVE TO ACHIEVE DESPITE ALL THE NEGATIVE NEWS’
▶ Serhiy Palkin, chief executive of Ukrainian side Shakhtar Donetsk, talks to Andy Mitten about running a club in the shadow of war
Full-scale war in Ukraine passed its second anniversary last week but war has affected the existence of Shakhtar Donetsk, the country’s most successful football club of modern times, for a decade now.
Well run, well supported, well backed and successful, Shakhtar long developed players, bought well and sold even better. Mykhaylo Mudryk, Fred, Alex Teixeira, Fernandinho, Willian, Douglas Costa and Henrikh Mkhitaryan were all sold for huge fees having thrived at Shakhtar, serial Ukrainian champions this century.
Money was reinvested and they also spent far more than any other Ukrainian side – the country’s top 10 most expensive transfers were all to the club which carries Donetsk in its name but has not played there for a decade.
In 2009 they became the second Ukrainian club after Dynamo Kiev and the first since independence to win a European trophy, the Uefa Cup. They are ranked 25th in Europe, above the likes of AC Milan and Tottenham Hotspur in Uefa’s coefficient rankings.
Serhiy Palkin, 49, joined in 2003 and two moments stand out for the club’s long-standing lead executive.
“These were in 2014 when we were forced to leave our stadium and our city after conflict broke out when Russia took control of Donetsk,” the 49-year-old tells The National when we meet him in a London hotel. “And 2022 when full-scale war broke out. We have been existing under a war for 10 years now. We lost our normal life ten years ago.”
The lives of players, managers and club staff have changed completely. “First we moved to Kyiv in 2014 and then in 2022 we moved to Lviv, 1,000 kilometres from Donetsk. We did that because we continue to play in European competitions and from Lviv to the Polish border it’s much closer. We can cross the border and take a flight to anywhere.”
The logistics just to play a European game are a challenge.
“It’s three hours to the airport in Poland from Lviv if there are no problems at the border, but sometimes you have a lot of crowds and you have to wait. You can spend two hours on that bus at the border waiting for your passports to be checked.”
Rare is the sight of Ukrainian men leaving their country.
“Ukrainian men are not allowed to leave, it is prohibited. But President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy and our government made a special allowance for our players to leave the country to play in these competitions. When you have this kind of allowance, when the whole country is watching you, then you must give everything on the pitch from the deepest corners of your heart.”
It’s not easy for this young squad. “When we travelled
to Porto and Barcelona this season, it took the whole day to get there. From a mental and physical point of view, it makes it very difficult for the players. They are less competitive when they arrive after 10 hours of travelling.”
Then they must make the return journey back to their country where sirens of the air raids are frequent, where one subject dominates the news cycle: War. “Our players and staff have to achieve with so much negativity in their lives,” said Palkin. “Negative news every day from the war, being away from their families and friends. It can destroy your brain. You sometimes wake up in the morning, read the news and you don’t want to continue. It’s difficult to be mentally fresh and concentrate.”
The conflict is never far away, though. Before the Porto home game, the brother of goalkeeper Dmytro Riznyk died from wounds after a mine exploded.
“What our players go through is not like any others in European competition,” says Palkin. “So, can you imagine what it feels like when you beat Barcelona? It means that even in this hard time Ukrainians can enjoy the positive feelings we gave them.”
Not that Shakhtar are allowed to play home games in their home country. “This season Hamburg, last season it was Warsaw. Legia [Warsaw] was not playing in European competitions last year so many fans came to watch us. This year, they are playing in European competition, so it makes no sense for us to be playing in the same city as them.
“In Hamburg, they’ve not had Champions League football for 20 years. It was an experiment
for us and it worked. Before that in Poland, there are more than three million Ukrainian refugees, plus Ukrainians who lived there before the war.
“The stadium was full when we played. We are always moving around. In Ukraine for domestic games, we cannot fly. Ukraine is a big country but we must go by bus to games. That can take five, six, eight hours each way.”
Shakhtar are constantly having to adapt to change brought about by football or geopolitics. There are new also laws brought in specifically for Ukrainian clubs, too.
“When the war started, everybody anticipated the decisions of Fifa as to our players,” says Palkin. “I realised that players from outside Ukraine would not stay and we started to sell them. We agreed sales with the agents and players and club for almost every player.
“We needed money, we have debts owed from buying players … I kept trying to contact Fifa to have communications with them for clarity. We needed to know the situation of our players. It was difficult. Fifa barely wanted to communicate with us … Fifa acted very badly in respect of Ukrainian clubs.
There was no openness, no discussions on how to help us.”
Finally, Fifa introduced Annexe 7, an extraordinary rule granting all foreign players and coaches the right to suspend their contract employment with Russian and Ukrainian clubs. “I don’t know why they did this and in just one day we lost all our players,” says Palkin. “We had a €40 million debt on these players and they were allowed to be released for free. And at the same time, Fifa told me that we had to pay these debts and if we didn’t then then we would withdraw our licence to play in European competitions.”
“The big winners were the agents of players. Agents have profited from war. They say they support Ukraine, but money which could have gone to us for investing into the players and developing the players went to agents. Suddenly, agents had players which were almost free and they could negotiate much more fees from the clubs they sold them too.
“We’re funded by Uefa prize money, sales of tickets and extras from stadiums in Champions League. We receive nothing from spectators in the domestic league as it’s prohibited.
We’ve had almost four years of no fans. First Covid, then war. A new resolution has been issued saying that 30 per cent of capacity of stadiums can be used for spectators. So, if your stadium holds 25,000, you can have 8,000 spectators. The problem is that you must guarantee bomb shelters for 30 per cent. This is impossible. You cannot build a bomb shelter for 8,000 people. So, we are left with maybe allowing 1,000 supporters.”
Ukrainian domestic football continues, with some games played close to the front line running for 600 miles across the east of the country.
“We travel by coach, we play the game and leave,” says Palkin. “Ukrainians are more or less adapted to this life. For new foreign players, they don’t feel about this war the same as the Brazilians, for instance, who left during the first weeks of the full-scale war.
“Then, we were in Kyiv and bombs were falling. They stayed in shelters for many days. The Russian army was approaching Kyiv from north, west and east. It was a nightmare and the players were scared a lot.
“They left, but they still think it’s like this and it’s not. I can’t say it’s calm because almost every day and night we have air raid sirens to warn that the rockets are coming in.
“People are spending half of the night in the shelters and it’s difficult, but it’s still not the same as when Russian army were close to Kyiv.”
The new Donbas Arena opened in 2009 with a concert by the American singer Beyonce. With an all-seated capacity of 52,198, it was a Uefa four-star venue and fit for what had become Ukraine’s most successful club.
The arena staged games for Euro 2012. Manchester United visited in 2013, yet within a year the venue was used to stage a peace march against the violence of pro-Russian unrest in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.
The following year, the stadium was damaged by artillery as pro-Ukrainian forces clashed with pro-Russian separatists for control of Ukraine’s fifth biggest city of one million.
It lies only 8km from the front line but since Shakhtar’s departure in 2014, it has not been used since. It is hard to overestimate the transformation forced upon Shakhtar.
“Before 2014 we were a club from Donetsk,” says Palkin. “Now we are seen as a club from the whole of Ukraine. We’ve played in Kharkiv, Kiev, Lviv. We play everywhere. We’ve spent 10 years travelling.”
This season, Shakhtar picked up nine points in a difficult Champions League group when they were unfortunate not to qualify for the knockout stage. Instead they went into a Europa League play-off against Marseille, which they lost 5-3 on aggregate after two late goals in the second leg in France.
But Shakhtar go on. “We must use this situation [the war] to develop our strategy,” says Palkin. “We are a unique club. We lost our home 10 years ago and yet we’ve kept good results. Not top results because it’s difficult with our conditions, but healthy results. And by getting these results, people continue to hear about us in Ukraine. People cannot forget us … We need friends.”
Fifa acted very badly in respect of Ukrainian clubs. There was no openness, no discussions on how to help us
SERHIY PALKIN
Shakhtar Donetsk chief executive