Running a successful football club in a country at war is no easy feat, never mind one with the history and prestige of Shakhtar.<\/p>\n
Over the past 20 years the club’s model has been to buy promising young Brazilian talents, develop them and then sell them to Europe’s top clubs for profit.<\/p>\n
Fernandinho, Douglas Costa, Willian and Fred are just a few who used Shakhtar as a stepping stone to Europe’s elite.<\/p>\n
Shakhtar have always blended South American flair with homegrown talents from their academy – the \u00a389 million sale of Mykhailo Mudryk to Chelsea in 2023 showed that can be a profitable avenue as well.<\/p>\n
However, Fifa’s decision in 2022 to allow both foreign and homegrown players to leave Ukrainian clubs for free because of the war left Shakhtar in a difficult position.<\/p>\n
“It was a big problem because we lost top talents. We lost 14 players and coaching staff,” said Palkin. “So we started to build a new Ukrainian team.”<\/p>\n
Thanks to the relationship they had built up with clubs and players in Brazil, Shakhtar have gradually returned to their model. <\/p>\n
Turan has 12 Brazilians in his squad, with more expected to arrive in the summer. Even with the uncertainty of war, Brazilians jump at the chance to join them.<\/p>\n
“We are not selling them comfort, because everybody understands the war, it’s not comfort. We are selling them their career pathway,” Palkin said.<\/p>\n
“We lost our home, but we didn’t lose our identity. We follow our procedures, we follow our model, what we are building.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Running a successful football club in a country at war is no easy feat, never mind one with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-424847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}