Courtesy: UEFA.com

Shakhtar fuelling national pride

Friday, 17 November 2006

by Igor Linnyk

from Kiev

With the Elite round of the UEFA Futsal Cup taking place from 4 December, uefa.com is having a closer look at each of the 16 sides involved. Today we examine 2005/06 semi-finalists FC Shakhtar Donetsk, who face old foes and two-time runners-up MFK Dinamo Moskva - hosting Group B - Sporting Clube de Portugal and Romania's CIP Deva, with only one slot in April's final four up for grabs.

Dominant force
Shakhtar, however, will be no slouches in this tough group as they dominate futsal in Ukraine, one of the sport's hotbeds. Since taking their first title in 2001/02, four years after being founded and in their first season under their familiar name, they have gone on to win the last three championships. They remain unbeaten this term in the league, although trailing MFK Energia Lviv by two points, and in the running for a fourth Ukrainian Cup in five years.

European focus
But now they are taking a break from domestic action - and the build-up to an important encounter with Energia - and their focus is Europe, and especially the Matchday 3 meeting with Dinamo. They have been beaten by the Russian champions two years running, with Shakhtar losing 6-2 in the 2004/05 second qualifying round and 1-0 the following campaign on their way to the semi-finals where they went down to eventual champions Boomerang Interviú. They began brightly in this year's European challenge, winning their three Main round games against Toligma Chisinau, FC Raba and Futsal Club Gödöllö, scoring a total of 20 goals and conceding just one.

National-team duty
Six players from Shakhtar's all-Ukrainian side - Serhiy Sytin, Sergiy Zadorozhniy, Yevgen Yunakov, Oleksandr Kondratyuk, Georgiy Melnikov and Vladyslav Kornyeyev - are currently in Portugal on international duty while Dmitriy Klochko is playing for the Under-21s in the traditional St Petersburg autumn tournament. However, the current absence that 39-year-old coach Oleg Solodovnyk rues most is veteran Igor Moskvychov, who is a doubt for the Elite round through injury.

'We can rival Dinamo'
Solodovnyk, in charge for all of Shakhtar's major honours, is not alone in stating the strength of the Group B mini-tournament. "This is the toughest group of all four," he said. "There are Europe's second, fifth and sixth-best clubs if you go by last year's ranking. That tells us a lot. Dinamo have an advantage as hosts - their own pitch, their fans. But we can rival them."

Spying mission
As for Sporting, Solodovnyk is relying on his former colleagues in the national squad, where he was assistant coach from 2004-05, to do some spying while in Portugal. Yet the coach has some inside knowledge of his own - he played in Russia for the then-dominant MFK Dina Moskva and was a post-USSR Commonwealth of Independent States team-mate of the legendary Konstantin Eremenko, now the Dinamo club president.


Posted by Luca Ranocchiari --> luca.ranocchiari@futsalplanet.com