Celtic take on Shakhtar Donetsk in their second Champions League Group F game on Wednesday night.
The game will take place at Legia Warsaw’s stadium in Poland.
Here, we take a closer look at the Ukrainian outfit.
Form
Shakhtar recorded a stunning 4-1 win over RB Leipzig in the Red Bull Arena in the first Champions League game played by a Ukrainian team since their country was invaded by Russian troops in February. Igor Jovicevic’s side have also made a good start to their Ukrainian Premier League campaign with three wins and a draw. It took a late injury-time winner from Oleh Ocheretko on Saturday, however, to give Shakhtar a 2-1 comeback win over Chornomorets Odesa and they sit behind league leaders Kolos on goal difference.
Manager
Jovicevic, 48, was born in Zagreb and started his youth career at Dinamo Zagreb before moving on to Real Madrid Castilla, Real Madrid’s reserve team. A forward, he had spells with, among others, Japanese club Yokohama F. Marinos, Brazilian side Guarani, Chinese side Shenyang Dongjin and Ukrainian side Karpaty Lviv, where he began his coaching career in 2014. He had a year bossing Slovenian side Celje before becoming involved in the Dinamo Zagreb set-up, where he was appointed first-team boss in 2020. Jovicevic took over at Dnipro-1 later the same year before becoming head coach of Shakhtar this summer on a two-year deal.
European Pedigree
The 13-times Ukrainian champions won the UEFA Cup in 2009. They knocked out the likes of Tottenham, CSKA Moscow and domestic rivals Dymano Kyiv on their way to the final, where they beat Werder Bremen 2–1 after extra-time. Shakhtar reached the Europa League semi-finals in 2019/20 but lost 5-0 to Inter Milan in neutral Dusseldorf, and finished bottom of their Champions League group last season behind Real Madrid, Inter and Sheriff. They have met Celtic in two previous Champions League campaigns with each side winning their two home matches.
Players
One name Celtic fans will recognise is Marian Shved, who scored twice against Leipzig and once again at the weekend. The 25-year-old winger signed for Celtic from Karpaty Lviv in January 2019 and was immediately loaned back to the Ukrainian club for the rest of the season. He scored on his Celtic debut in a 2-0 win against Nomme Kalju in July 2019 but only made three appearances in total and left for Mechelen in 2021. There are few foreign players in the Shakhtar squad this season. Lassina Traore is from Burkina Faso, midfielder Neven Durasek is a Croatian and Brazilian Lucas Taylor is on loan from PAOK. Shakhtar have several Ukraine internationals in their squad who could face Scotland this month including Oleksandr Zubkov, Mykhaylo Mudryk, Taras Stepanenko, Bohdan Mykhaylichenko, Mykola Matviyenko and Valeriy Bondar, while captain Andriy Pyatov has 102 caps.
