Artem Chobanian
There have been many disputes of what future awaits Ukrainian football. With the new perspectives that are now in Ukraine and more/better opportunities for the clubs we can hope there will soon appear another country that will challenge the best European championships.
However, everything begins with one or two clubs that rocket out from the rest and show their best qualities much earlier than other teams from the country. In Ukraine there has been Dynamo Kyiv — the club that became known all over Europe long before the establishment of an independent Ukraine. But there’s competition from Shakhtar Donetsk now, another club that has gained popularity in Europe and have been the richest club in Ukraine for 5 years!
Last season Shakhtar spent $100M in the transfer market and came second only to Bayern Munich with $101M.
This article is the story of Shakhtar’s development and how ONE man can make a difference to the football environment of a country.
We are not going to dwell on the whole history of the club. Rather we’d stop on the latest events that changed the club for the better and in a very short period of time helped to transform the Ukrainian football to make it respected not just at home, but also in Europe.
We say “money rules the world”. Yes, that’s true. But there’s good money and bad money. In the late ‘90s in Donetsk appeared a man whose idea of “good money” was new and revolutionary for Ukraine. That man was Rinat Akhmetov (pictured right).
Akhmetov managed to become a billionaire, but soon found his money burning his hands, and so he decided to do something ‘charitable’, as he confessed in an interview, to help his native city Donetsk to thrive. At that time one of the biggest cities of Ukraine was in decline. No working infrastructure, no jobs, no proper living conditions, etc. There was one joy — football. Akhmetov invested in Shakhtar. He managed to find ways to buy it, though it was not an easy purchase, and quite soon he proved his interests were not focused only on gaining profits from the club.
When he became the owner, Shakhtar the club, the stadium, and the training base were in an awful state. Akhmetov was a professional businessman and used to building teams to deliver what he wanted. To this end he hired a team of football enthusiasts to help him and quite soon Shakhtar were established as the second best team in the championship, finding new talents like Atelkin, Onopko, Zubov, Rebrov, Popov, Shutkov and others.
But that was just the beginning. The ‘90s were difficult years for Ukraine and investments were rare and very risky, but Akhmetov didn’t stop his activity. Quite soon the fans and football administration understood that Shakhtar’s owner wasn’t thinking only of his profits — his goal was to create a strong team that would soon become one of the best in Europe.
The team Akhmetov put together worked with such passion that there soon appeared people who became envious of the early Shakhtar successes.
Politics, as often happens, became involved and Akhmetov had to fight against bureaucracy, political intrigues and business games to promote his good will and his club. Shakhtar were playing better and better, but couldn’t lift the domestic title straight away. However, the club’s great games in the Champions League and UEFA Cup proved the team had become a serious power.
Moreover, Akhmetov had invested millions of dollars in the training base that many experts now consider the best in Europe. People who don’t know the details would say “So what? The training base? Nothing special…” But it is not only a base, it is a sport complex and the major role of it is the promotion of football in Donetsk and Ukraine.
Shakhtar scouts search young talents from all over Ukraine and make official offers to their parents and invite the boys to live and study and train at the base to make them real football professionals. Many of the students leave the Shakhtar school with a wonderful secondary education and do not want become footballers and for this no-one rebukes them. Also every year Shakhtar’s training base invites youngsters from many European clubs, like Celtic, Ajax, PSV, Sparta and others for the annual summer tournament….
What makes Shakhtar truly different from Dynamo Kyiv is their independence. “Traditionally” the club from Kyiv have been under the patronage of the country’s sport administration while the others had to find their own ways to survive and provide financial security. Shakhtar and Ahmetov work and progress without any support and interference from outside.
When, finally, Shakhtar became champions and then again and again, people realized how much good Akhmetov has done to create the club that is now respected in Europe as he had hoped it would be many years ago. Of course, there have been wonderful players, brilliant coaches like Viktor Prokopenko, who couldn’t win anything with the club, but was like a caring and nurturing father for the players (when he died, about 1 ½ years ago, Donetsk went into mourning for 3 days — an unprecedented event in the modern history of the city) and Nevio Scala, whose original approach to tactics gained the first championship for Shakhtar, and, of course, Mirca Luchescu.
Fans can see only the tip of the iceberg: the club’s success and failures in the tournaments, injuries of the players, and nothing else; unless they are interested in the details. For a club to function properly everything should be considered carefully. That’s why Rinat Akhmetov deals with everything and everybody personally. He has managers, book-keepers, financial directors and other professionals in his team, but they are just part of the greater infrastructure. The primary concern is the players, the team of coaches, the pitch and the quality of play. These things are controlled by Akhmetov himself.
In spite of the bad results at the start of this season, all understand that any club can be in decline at some period of time, so we just have to wait for the team to recover.
Akhmetov’s hard work to create a club of European class has ended successfully and Shakhtar now is recognized all over Europe as a serious power that, on their day, can crush any famous team.
Ukrainian football is blazing a trail in the woods of European football and Shakhtar Donetsk is the leading power now (along with Dynamo Kyiv) that brings fame to Ukraine. Let’s hope these are fine days ahead!
