Shakhtar football club celebrates its 86th foundation anniversary

On 24 May 1936, Stakhanovets played its first official match in the USSR Championship, meeting on the road with Dinamo Kazan. It is from this moment that the history of the Donetsk club kicked off. Fyodor Manov became the scorer of the Miners’ debut goal. Having strengthened the squad with the best Donbass players, the team have been playing in the top flight since 1938.

40 trophies and UEFA Cup

Tournament success came the Miner’s way in the middle of the past century. In 1961, Shakhtar raised the USSR Cup – the first trophy in their history, they later repeated this achievement in the 1962 season. The next big victories were associated with a new generation of players – the Donetsk side won the USSR Cup twice more in 1980 and 1983, they also claimed the Season’s Cup in 1984 (the current Super Cup). Also, the team won the Soviet Union league title four times (1951, 1975, 1978, 1979).

Shakhtar managed to win gold medals already in the independent Ukraine time. They enjoyed their debut title glory in the 2001/02 season, with the club securing a total of 13 league titles. Also, the Miners raised 13 Cups of Ukraine and 9 domestic Super Cups. The main trophy in the history of Shakhtar is the UEFA Cup which they won in 2009.

Legendary coaches

Throughout the history of Shakhtar, 34 head coaches have worked with the team. Shakhtar’s first coach was Nikolai Naumov, and the record holders in the Soviet period were Oleg Oshenkov who led the team for 9 years (1960–1969), and Viktor Nosov (1979–1985), with whom the Miners won three trophies and two sets of medals.

Mircea Lucescu holds an absolute record for both the longest tenure as head coach and the number of awards. The Romanian coach headed Shakhtar for 12 years (2004–2016), during which time the team played 573 matches and won 22 trophies. The second in terms of the number of titles is the Portuguese Paulo Fonseca: in just three seasons, he won seven trophies with the team.

Records in faces

Shakhtar's main record holder for the number of appearances made is Croatian Darijo Srna who appeared in 536 games with the team between 2003 and 2018. Another legendary Shakhtar captain Mikhail Sokolovskiy made 485 appearances in the orange-and-black jersey from 1974 to 1987. Goalkeeper Andriy Pyatov is a major appearance maker among the current players: he has been playing since 2007 and amassed 480 apps to date.

Brazilian striker Luiz Adriano remains the most prolific player in the history of Shakhtar after netting 128 goals between 2007 and 2015. Andrii Vorobei (114), Vitaliy Starukhin (110) and Mikhail Sokolovskiy (105) also passed the scoring mark of a hundred goals.

FC Shakhtar congratulates everyone who has written and continues making the great history of the club for 86 years now. We want to thank veterans, players and coaches of different generations, the staff, partners of the club and, of course, all our fans. Thanks to your support, Shakhtar continues to move forward, achieving new successes and victories!