Shakhtar CEO told how the war in Ukraine affected the Donetsk club

Shakhtar CEO Sergei Palkin talked about how the war in Ukraine affected the club.

"When the war started, we didn't play for six months. Then when we decided to play, we had no coaching staff, half the team, foreigners, all left. There was a 15-man team, and that was it. So we started to build a team from scratch. And that was the biggest challenge we faced during that period.

We should have appointed the coaching staff, we had to orient ourselves in time and invite the players who want to play in our country. And those are, of course, only Ukrainians. Traore was the only foreigner I would like to thank and give credit for his actions. He stays and I don`t see any signs that he wants to go anywhere.

That`s why we started from scratch. Moreover, when we started the championship and played in a draw with Metalist 1925, they started saying that Shakhtar is not the same, we have no chance for the championship, we won`t say anything about European cups. But then everything turned upside down. It turned out that almost all decisions were correct.

The soccer shown by the lads - both in the Champions League group stage and in the first league round - is one of the best I've seen in the last 20 years at Shakhtar. I'm not talking more about the result, but how the guys played, the soccer they showed," Palkin said.