After finishing bottom of Group D, Shakhtar Donetsk missed out on both the knock-out stages of this year’s Champions League and a slot in the UEFA Cup, but the club are still advancing.

Former army club Dynamo Kiev were the Ukraine’s most successful and well-known club even before the country’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

In addition to winning UEFA’s Cup Winners’ Cup in 1975 and again 11 years later, Kiev won the second independent Ukrainian league championship in 1992/93 and retained the title for the next EIGHT seasons.
That winning run was brought to a halt in 2000/01 by rivals Shakhtar Donetsk, who hope to move on to a very different stage in every sense.

‘The stadium would cost more than $200m but Akhmetov is not short of cash. Only in his 40s, he is one of the Ukraine’s richest men, worth billions of pounds.’


Owned by UkraInian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, Shakhtar Donetsk want to bring the Champions League final to the Ukraine by building a new five-star UEFA-approved 50,000-seat stadium.

UK consultant Arup has been recruited by Akhmetov to design the ground and the owner has also funded the signing of a number of Brazilians to bolster the squad. Building his dream has proved difficult, though. Site work was initially scheduled to begin in April 2005 and the first games were due to be held there this season. Delays dogged the scheme. The original project manager – Anglo Australian firm Bovis Lend Lease – walked away and the budget spiralled.

Akhmetov said: “The budget and seating capacity of the stadium changed several times. Initially I was saying that the stadium’s seating capacity would be for a 33,000 audience and the budget [would be] $100m (£52m). On meeting with fans, I made some corrections, saying that the seating capacity would be for 40,000 and the budget $100m. After deep analysis and long discussions we reached a conclusion that seating capacity would be for 50,000 and the budget, God Help us to fit in, $200m (£104m).”

Akhmetov eventually estimated that the stadium would cost more than $200m – a figure that the finished project could take 30 years to repay. That is a long time-scale for the return of his capital but Akhmetov is not short of cash. Only in his 40s, he is one of the Ukraine’s richest men, worth billions of pounds.

Akhmetov came from simple origins and both his father and brother worked as coal miners but the Ukraine’s move to independence proved his making and he had powerful patrons in Victor Yanukovych, a regional governor and failed presidential candidate, and businessman Akhat Bragin, who was subsequently murdered – blown up in the stadium VIP box during a league match in 1995

Akhmetov's company owned Ukraine's third-largest steel producer, Azovstal, and he was valued at $2.4billion by US business magazine, Forbes. He also has interests in the country’s coal industry, the media and the mobile phone sector but was the subject of a court case over his role in the privatisation.

A Kiev court reversed a winning U$800m (£416m) bid made by Akhmetov, who is a practising Muslim, and his partner Victor Pinchuk for the Ukraine’s leading steel company, Kryvorizhstal. The decision came after claims that the business was sold off on the cheap and Kryvorizhstal was re-privatised and sold off to Indian tycoon Lakshmi Mittal.

Akhmetov was still able to get the stadium project under way – a start that was buoyed by the Ukraine and Poland surprisingly beating Italy to the right to host Euro 2012. Donetsk’s new ground will be guaranteed major matches – and Akhmetov? He has moved into politics and become a Ukrainian MP but remains in charge of Donetsk, who are virtual certainties to qualify for a slot in next season’s Champions League.