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From Robert O’Connor
BBC Sport
A little after 10pm, there’s not 1 pair of footsteps to be discovered on the pavements of Donetsk.
It is an hour before the nightly army curfew starts but taking any chances and the town is slipping into a state of silent. Once the curfew is lifted , it will not stir again until 4am tomorrow.
Donetsk is a town that bristled with guarantee. Situated in the east of Ukraine close to the borders of Russia, it is a key place in a bitter conflict that shows very little sign of easing.
About 13,000 people have been murdered, and the United Nations estimates at least 1.3 million have fled their houses. Many appear weakened by decades of isolation and its own football team – the center of the city existence – has fled.
Champions of Ukraine, shakhtar Donetsk, among the 20 greatest teams in Europe according to Uefa played in May 2014.
The fighting had started in April, when heavily equipped separatists captured large areas of territory such as Donetsk, in Ukraine’s Donbas area. The self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) has been created.
The government accuses Russia of arming the separatists in the east, and of sending troops. Moscow denies this, but acknowledges that Russian”volunteers” are battling for the rebels.
Shakhtar’s glorious Donbas Arena was the setting for a win. Barely 18,000 turned as the city braced for war. Two days after, the DPR flag has been raised – over law enforcement headquarters. With shelling forces retaliated. 1 month before, Russia had annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in the south.
The Donbas Arena hosted the Euro 2012 semi-final. World winners Spain beat Portugal on penalties before a capacity crowd and the countless millions. There’s no football played here now. The only indication of its life is that a sign reading’keep off the grass’.
The stadium has been broken twice – once after the rocket landed nearby, and when a shell crashed into the stadium, starting a fire. The shockwaves shook a part of the roof off. There is quite a way, although it’s had repairs that are rudimentary.
When Shakhtar match Manchester City again in the Champions League this season, it won’t be here but in Kharkiv, 100 miles to the westcoast.
“It was fairly costly to repair the roof following the burst pulled off it,” says Victoria, a stadium guide. After, there could have been an army of manuals utilized to show visitors round. Victoria adds:”The job needs finishing and that requires money the DPR don’t have.”
Stepping down the players’ tunnelwe tread the cement corridors where mountains of medical and food supplies were stored until 2017, transported in lorries from Ukraine as part of Shakhtar owner Rinat Akhmetov’s’Let’s Help’ aid drive. However, you’ll hear appreciation .
When separatists took charge of this city, shakhtar were made to leave by the safety situation. They cannot return. To do so would be to give implicit awareness to the rebels and, besides, it would be impossible for visiting groups to cross the militarised line of connection between DPR and Ukrainian fighters.
Oleg Antipov, former Shakhtar media officer and club historian, says the town’s people have”disowned” Akhmetov.
“His money and influence could have aided the town,” he adds. “What he did to the town means nothing now.”
Nikolai Tarapat, the DPR’s sports minister, states:”It is up to Mr Akhmetov. We can not comment on his conclusions. For business reasons move away the club and he chose to forfeit Donetsk. Who knows? Maybe in the future, Shakhtar could become the secret to peace”
There’s no way to allow Shakhtar to avoid the conflict completely, if they’ve left their home city.
A Ukrainian organisation issued all teams from the Premier League of Ukraine with T-shirts bearing slogans for war experts to be worn before kick-off. Many of the 18 teams wore them. The one exception has been Shakhtar.
The veterans’ organisation attributed the Football Federation of Ukraine for intervening on Shakhtar’s behalf, accusing itsomewhat radically, of”drinking the blood of easy Ukrainian patriots”. There was a prior episode in 2014 if the team were requested to wear shirts ‘Glory into the Ukrainian Army’ prior to a game against Karpaty Lviv. Shakhtar refused.
Ex-Shakhtar defender Yaroslav Rakitskiy, a Donbas native, faced repeated questioning in the media on his refusal to sing the national anthem if he played with Ukraine. He left the club in January for Russian champions Zenit St Petersburg, though his image remains plastered on the outside of the Donbas Arena.
30, rakitskiy, has been derided as a traitor over the move. Zenit are sponsored by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom, which has been cutting off gas supplies to Ukraine since the battle began.
The move caused irreparable harm to Rakitskiy’s standing, with 57% of fans polled from the Kyiv news site Tribune in 2019 saying they think he should never play for the national team again. Since being marketed he hasn’t yet been picked.
Shakhtar moved at 2009 to the Donbas Arena, swapping the crumbling 1930s terraces finished at Shcherbakov Park for a new floor. “The choice to leave us Shakhtar’s, but we can not get upset,” says Antipov. “We must look to our potential ”
The professionals of the region are forced to depart but amateur football is being played here. There runs A championship throughout the summertime. The 2018 champions Gvardeets (the Guardsmen) play their games here in Donetsk. They direct the branch at the season’s halfway point.
Their games are played in the Donetsk Olympic Stadium, in which as 2008 Shakhtar played against Barcelona, AC Milan and Roma from the Champions League before 25,000 fans. The amateur league games draw on attendances, with the majority of matches gathering just a few hundred spectators.
As Shakhtar home now is the Metalist Stadium at Kharkiv for. Formerly , they pitched up in the western city of Lviv, a hotbed of nationalism, in which they had been hated due to Donbas’ affinity to Russia.
“Our goal is to help them feel at home whilst not forgetting they are visitors,” says Anton Ivanov, club director of Shakhtar’s new landlords, FC Metalist.
“Nobody feels like Shakhtar are a refugee team. We are still one nation, although this warfare came into our lives quite abruptly. There are approximately 200,000 refugees out of Donbas from Kharkiv. They are Kharkiv citizens now. We’re happy to have Shakhtar because they attract the Champions League here”
Shakhtar emerged in the shadow of the Dynamo Kyiv that was a lot more powerful to rule football, that has shifted radically in recent 30 years. In Soviet times, the Communist Party used to force Ukraine’s best players to combine Dynamo.
“Should you defied the celebration, you’d be thrown outside,” says ex-Shakhtar captain Viktor Zvyaginstev. “And after you were out of this celebration, you were gone. You lose your car, your house. Your kids are thrown from school.”???
Things are different today. Since 2002, Shakhtar have won 12 league names and also have become regulars at the Champions League. Success is down to billionaire owner when its president was killed in the stadium in Shcherbakov Park in 1995, Akhmetov, who inherited the club. Ever since then, he’s ploughed millions of dollars with the aim of displacing Dynamo at the very best, to the team.
In 2002, Shakhtar made its first overseas coach – Inter Milan player Nevio Scala. Within half an hour, they acquired their first indigenous title. “Scala attracted something that the club had not had before,” says ex-Shakhtar along with Ukraine captain Igor Petrov. “It educated the group which they may conquer Dynamo Kyiv. Needless to say, it helped that the president was getting richer all the time.”
The appointment of a 2nd foreign coach – recognized Mircea Lucescu, in 2004 – has been yet another turning point. “Lucescu was that the person who started bringing in young Brazilians and developing them to market,” says Petrov.
With Ukraine unable to develop its young gamers, Shakhtar instead started building a network of representatives and scouts in South America. Starting with winger Jadson, whose goal from Werder Bremen in 2009 clinched victory in the Uefa Cup, through to forward Douglas Costa, that blasted the Ukrainian transport record when he had been sold to Bayern Munich for 30m in 2015, Shakhtar have come to be a shop window for Brazilian stars coming into Europe. Chelsea’s Willian passed Donbas, as did the Fernandinho of Manchester City.
“Whoever has been talented locally made for other countries,” says Petrov of an exodus after the Soviet Union fell in 1991. “From the time of 2005, there was not any new generation coming in Russia or Ukraine, so we made the choice to look in Brazil. When we look back, there was no other option.”
Central to the new identity of the club has been the remainder of Ukraine and its place at a divide between most Russian-speaking east.
“The rivalry with Dynamo really began when Shakhtar started beating them in 2004,” says Sharafudinov. “Imagine it. You had 30,000 fans travelling into Kyiv from Donetsk if the teams played . The capital was taken over by Shakhtar’s colours of orange and black. Suddenly the mindset of the media was shifting. That’s when politics really started coming to the film.”
After Shakhtar maintained a victory parade to celebrate winning the Uefa Cup – the final version before it turned into the most Europa League – Viktor Yanukovych was the star attraction.
A former governor of the Donetsk area, the closest ties and service of Yanukovych were with the mainly Russian-speaking southern and eastern sections of Ukraine. It helped him to win the presidential vote in 2004, and also many in these regions felt threatened when, after protests in Kiev which became known as the Orange Revolution, the election had been declared deceptive and he was ousted out of power.
His speech Shakhtar supporters on this afternoon in 2009 was symbolic – but not in ways anyone might have expected then. He had rebuilt his standing and was once more close to rule. “Shakhtar has become a symbol of Ukraine,” he explained. “I think that this triumph opens the way into the unification of Ukraine.”
Yanukovych was elected president 2010 – legitimately this time – but a demonstration against his decision to leave a European Union venture deal in November 2013 morphed into a massive – and exceptionally violent – campaign to push him out of power.
Shakhtar today looks – a state.
The nation’s authorities curates a website listing the ones it accuses of terrorism by dint of association with separatist rebels in the east. It has a clutch of titles who were highly regarded in Ukraine, folks such as the captain Zvyaginstev that is ex-Shakhtar. We meet at the Donetsk city soccer administration, glistening with souvenirs that are Soviet-era, in his cramped office.
“Football unites all the individuals of Donetsk,” he says through a haze of cigarette smoke. “It’s not a fantasy. I feel that in my own life, we will see football back again. Old Shakhtar in the Soviet times, that is what is in my mind. The same as Bobby Charlton will never forget at Manchester United.
“But I regret what has happened. It was all out of our hands. We lived in peace. Look at us now.”
Ali Plumb provides his thoughts on the year’s movies up to Now
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