War-hit Shakhtar brush off upheaval as they face Roma
Kiev, Ukraine: War refugees Shakhtar Donetsk head into Wednesday's Champions League clash with Italian side AS Roma in high spirits despite a lack of signings and sparse match practice.
The war in eastern Ukraine between government forces and Russian-backed separatists has forced Shakhtar to play their home games far from their state-of-the-art Donbass Arena stadium for the past four years.
In 2014, the club moved to Lviv, close to Ukraine's western border with Poland, but the local crowd — that favours their own top-flight side, Karpaty — was often openly hostile to the Donetsk team or ignored their games all together.
Last year, Shakhtar's owners decided to switch their "home" venue to the eastern city of Kharkiv, 250 kilometres northwest of their native Donetsk.
Shakhtar, the only club from the eastern Europe in the Champions League knockout stage, will host Roma at the 40,000-seat Metalist Kharkiv stadium.
The Ukraine conflict has caused Shakhtar's billionaire owner Rinat Akhmetov to lose control of dozens of his coal mining and metallurgical enterprises located in the eastern rebel-held territories.
That has seriously lightened the tycoon's wallet, hampering the signing of new players and forcing the club's bosses to focus on retaining their existing foreign players and fusing them with young homegrown talent.
Shakhtar's Portuguese manager Paulo Fonseca, who replaced Romanian Mircea Lucescu at the helm in 2016, said he was pleased to avoid "such great clubs as Barcelona and PSG" in the last 16.
Fonseca warned however that the back-in-form Serie A side would be a tough proposition.
"We are aware that the opponents are worthy and it won't be easy," he told the club's website. "This is a perfectly organised team that copes wonderfully with the tasks it is set."
