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From Robert O’Connor
BBC Sport
A bit after 10pm, there is not one pair of footsteps.
It is an hour ahead of the nightly military curfew begins but taking any chances and the city is slipping into a state of silent. It won’t stir again until tomorrowonce the curfew is lifted.
Donetsk is a city that bristled with promise. Situated in the west of Ukraine close to Russia’s borders, it is an integral place in a bitter conflict that shows little sign of easing.
Approximately 13,000 people have been murdered, and the United Nations estimates at least 1.3 million have fled their homes. Many seem diminished by decades of isolation and its own soccer team – that the center of the city’s social existence – has been fled.
Shakhtar Donetsk, champions of Ukraine, one of the 20 greatest teams in Europe based on Uefa played in May 2014.
The fighting had begun in April, when heavily equipped separatists captured large regions of territory in Ukraine’s Donbas region, including Donetsk. The self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) has been established.
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.
The magnificent Donbas Arena of shakhtar has been the setting for a 3-1 win. Barely 18,000 turned as the city. Two days afterwards, the DPR flag was raised – illegally – over the police headquarters. Ukrainian forces retaliated with shelling. 1 month before, Russia had annexed the Crimean peninsula in the south of Ukraine.
The Euro 2012 semi-final was hosted by the Donbas Arena. World champions Spain beat Portugal on penalties and the countless millions watching on TV. There is no football played . The only indication of its former lifestyle is a sign reading’keep off the grass’.
The scene has been severely broken twice – once after a rocket landed nearby, and again when a shell crashed to the stadium, beginning a flame. The shockwaves shook a part of the roof away. It has had repairs, but there is a long way.
When Shakhtar meet Manchester City again from the Champions League this year, it won’t be here but in Kharkiv, 100 miles to the westcoast.
“It was pretty costly to fix the roof after the blast pulled it off,” says Victoria, a stadium guide. There could have been an army. Victoria adds:”The job needs finishing which takes money the DPR don’t have.”
Stepping down the players’ tunnel, we tread the concrete corridors in which mountains of food and medical equipment were saved until 2017, hauled in lorries from Ukraine as part of Shakhtar owner Rinat Akhmetov’s’Let’s Help’ assist drive. But you’ll hear gratitude for the oligarch’s charity .
When separatists took charge of this city, shakhtar were made to leave by the security scenario. They can’t go back. To do this would be to provide implied understanding to the rebels and, moreover, it would not be possible for visiting teams to cross the militarised line of contact between DPR and Allied fighters.
Oleg Antipov, former Shakhtar media officer and club historian, says the town’s people have”disowned” Akhmetov.
“His money and influence could have helped the town,” he adds. “What he did to the town means nothing now.”
Nikolai Tarapat, the DPR’s sports ministry, says:”It’s around Mr Akhmetov. We can’t comment on his decisions. For any business reasons he chose to forfeit Donetsk and move the club away. Who knows? Maybe later on, Shakhtar could become the secret to peace”
If they have abandoned their home city, there’s not any way to allow Shakhtar to prevent the conflict completely.
A Ukrainian governmental organisation issued all teams in the Premier League of Ukraine with T-shirts bearing slogans for war experts to be worn before kick-off. Seventeen of the 18 teams wore them. The one exception was Shakhtar.
The veterans’ organisation attributed the Football Federation of Ukraine for intervening on Shakhtar’s behalf, accusing itsomewhat drastically, of”drinking the blood of simple Ukrainian patriots”. There was a prior incident in 2014 if the team were requested to wear shirts ‘Glory to the Allied Army’ prior to a game against Karpaty Lviv. Shakhtar refused.
Ex-Shakhtar defender Yaroslav Rakitskiy, a Donbas indigenous, confronted repeated questioning in the media about his refusal to sing the national anthem if he played with Ukraine. He left the team in January for Russian champions Zenit St Petersburg, though his image remains plastered on the outside of the Donbas Arena.
Rakitskiy, 30, has been derided as a traitor over the transfer. 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 movement caused irreparable harm to Rakitskiy’s standing, with 57% of supporters polled by the Kyiv news website Tribune at 2019 saying they think he shouldn’t ever play for the national team . Since being sold he hasn’t yet been picked.
Shakhtar moved to the Donbas Arena at 2009, swapping the crumbling 1930s terraces over at Shcherbakov Park to get a new floor. “The choice to leave us Shakhtar’s, however we can’t become angry,” says Antipov. “We must look to our potential .”
The region’s professionals have been forced to depart but amateur soccer is still being performed . A 10-team championship runs during the summer months. The 2018 champions Gvardeets (that the Guardsmen) perform with their matches in Donetsk. They lead the branch in the season’s halfway stage.
Their matches are played at the Donetsk Olympic Stadium, in which as 2008 Shakhtar played Barcelona, AC Milan and Roma from the Champions League in front of 25,000 fans. Attendances are drawn by the league matches, with most matches gathering just a couple of hundred spectators.
As Shakhtar themselves, dwelling today is the Metalist Stadium in Kharkiv for. Formerly , they pitched in the western city of Lviv, a hotbed of Ukrainian nationalism, in which they had been despised due to Donbas’ affinity to Russia.
“Our aim is to help them feel at home while not forgetting they are visitors,” says Anton Ivanov, team director of Shakhtar’s new landlords, FC Metalist.
“nobody feels like Shakhtar are a refugee team. This warfare came quite but we are still 1 nation. There are approximately 200,000 refugees in Donbas in Kharkiv. They are Kharkiv citizens. We are pleased to have Shakhtar since they attract the Champions League here.”
Shakhtar emerged in the shadow of the Dynamo Kyiv that was historically far more successful to rule. In Soviet times, the Communist Party used to force the finest players of Ukraine to join Dynamo.
“If you defied the party, you’d be thrown out,” says ex-Shakhtar captain Viktor Zvyaginstev. “And once you had been out of this celebration, you’re gone. Your home, your car is lost by you. Your children are thrown from school”???
Things are extremely different today. Since 2002, Shakhtar have won 12 league names and have become regulars at the Champions League. Such success is down into billionaire owner when its previous president was killed in a bomb attack at the stadium in Shcherbakov Park in 1995, Akhmetov, who inherited the team. Since that time, he has ploughed millions of dollars with the intention of displacing Dynamo in the very best, into the bar.
Back in 2002, Shakhtar appointed its first overseas coach – Inter Milan player Nevio Scala. Within six months, they won their very first title that was indigenous. “Scala brought something the club had not had previously,” states ex-Shakhtar along with Ukraine captain Igor Petrov. “It educated the team which they might conquer Dynamo Kyiv. Needless to say, it helped that the president was getting richer all the time.”
The appointment of a foreign coach – Romanian Mircea Lucescu, in 2004 – was another turning point. “Lucescu was the one who started earning young Brazilians and growing them to sell,” says Petrov.
Together with Ukraine fighting to develop its young gamers, Shakhtar began building a network of scouts and representatives . Starting with winger Jadson, whose aim against Werder Bremen in 2009 clinched victory in the Uefa Cup, during to forwards Douglas Costa, that shattered the Ukrainian transport document when he was sold to Bayern Munich for $30m in 2015, Shakhtar have become a store window for Brazilian stars coming into Europe. As did the Fernandinho of Manchester City chelsea’s Willian also passed through Donbas.
“Whoever has been gifted locally left for other nations,” says Petrov of the exodus after the Soviet Union fell in 1991. “From the time of 2005, there was no new generation coming in Russia or Ukraine, so we made the choice to check in Brazil. When we look back, there was no other alternative.”
Regardless of the influx of foreigners, central to the club’s new identity was its location at a split between the majority Russian-speaking east and the rest of Ukraine.
“The rivalry with Dynamo actually began when Shakhtar started beating them in 2004,” says Sharafudinov. “Picture it. If the teams played you had 30,000 fans travelling from Donetsk . The funds was taken over by Shakhtar’s colors of orange and black. Suddenly this media’s mindset was shifting. That’s when politics really started coming to the picture.”
When Shakhtar held 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 political ties and service of Yanukovych were with the mostly Russian-speaking southern and eastern parts of Ukraine. It helped him to win the presidential elections in 2004, and many in those areas felt betrayed when, after the election had been declared deceptive and he had been ousted from power.
His address Shakhtar’s clamouring supporters on this day in 2009 was symbolic – although not in ways anybody might have expected then. He had rebuilt his standing and was once again close to rule. “Shakhtar has become a sign of Ukraine,” he explained. “I think that this triumph opens the way into the unification of all Ukraine.”
Yanukovych was elected president 2010 – this time – but a demonstration against his decision to leave a European Union partnership deal in November 2013 morphed to a huge – and violent – campaign to push him out of power.
Shakhtar looks – a state far from the united.
The nation’s authorities curates a site listing the ones it accuses of terrorism by dint of institution with separatist rebels from the east. It features a clutch of names that were once regarded people such as the ex-Shakhtar captain Zvyaginstev, in Ukraine. We meet at the Donetsk city soccer administration in which he functions as local chair, glistening with souvenirs that are Soviet-era, with his cramped office.
“Football combines all the people of Donetsk,” he says through a haze of cigarette smoke. “It’s not a fantasy. I believe that in my own life, football will be seen by us in the Donbas Arena . Old Shakhtar. The same as Bobby Charlton will never forget his days at Manchester United.
“However, I regret what’s happened. It was out of our hands. We dwelt in peace. Look at us today.”
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