Artem Frankov, a well-known journalist and editor-in-chief of Football magazine, shared his first impressions of Shakhtar Donetsk in the new season.
Artem Frankov (photo: V.Peregnyak)"There were a lot of questions about Shakhtar. Without Stepanenko and Sudakov (appendicitis!), the team played (in the match of the 1st round of the Ukrainian championship with Metalist 1925, 2:1 - editor's note) in some super-flanking football, we can say, conceding the centre of the field to not the strongest opponent - Metalist 1925 had many chances, and everything could have ended much worse for the Pitmen.
And then there is the loss of centre-back Bondar, who will be treated for a broken collarbone for at least two months. Rakitskiy, Kornienko and Nazarina continue to be disqualified (for a mass brawl with Dnipro 1 back in the last season), Trubin has already served his suspension, but the situation with him regarding his transfer to Inter is unclear. There is no official data, but if Anatoliy, as the Italians write, really went to aggravate relations with the club, intending to go as a free agent - oh, a question... Although Riznyk, who played against Metalist 1925 - is also a very strong and reliable goalkeeper.
We had to enter the transfer market, and try to guess whether Shakhtar would have rushed to buy Lemkin, the centre-back of the Israeli national youth team, if not for the obvious personnel problems.
There are rumours about Chygrynskiy's return, while Shakhtar are buying up youngsters - we will surely see 18-year-old Brazilian winger Eginaldo soon. Here we should already talk about the team's chemistry - there are a lot of newcomers, there are also questions about Patrick van Leeuwen's new tactics. After all, the Pitmen played with two strikers against Kharkiv, and that's if we don't include Zubkov, who shot incessantly at goal!", Frankov said.
