FIFA threatened Shakhtar with the revocation of their licence to participate in European competitions if the Donetsk club did not pay debts to other clubs for players. This was announced by the Pitmen's CEO Serhiy Palkin.
Photo: shakhtar.com"When the full-scale war started, everyone was waiting for FIFA's decision regarding our players. I realised that the legionnaires would not stay and we started selling them. We negotiated the sale with agents, players and the club for almost every player.
We needed money as we had debts after buying the players. We almost signed a contract with Fulham to sell Solomon and almost agreed a deal for Tete with Lyon. I was constantly trying to contact FIFA to harmonise everything. We needed to know the whole situation regarding our players.
But FIFA almost didn't want to communicate with us. We tried to talk to them but they didn't want to talk and I don't understand that. FIFA behaved very badly towards Ukrainian clubs: no openness, no discussions about how to help us.
In just one day we lost all our foreign players. We had a debt of 40 million euros on these players, and FIFA allowed them to leave for free. And at the same time FIFA told us that we had to pay these debts and if we didn't do that we would have our licence to play in European cups revoked.
The biggest beneficiaries were the agents of the players who profited from the war. FIFA says that it supports Ukraine, but the money that could have gone to us for investments and player development went to agents who employed players for large fees at other clubs," Palkin told The National.
