Shakhtar CEO: Jovicevic is the coach with a European mentality

FC Shakhtar CEO Sergei Palkin commented on the appointment of the new head coach.

- Mr Palkin, why did the club choose Igor Jovicevic?
- We had several candidates, but Jovicevic remained the number one candidate. First of all, he has European experience – he is one of the first players from Croatia to have moved to Real Madrid, he coached Dinamo Zagreb U19 (Zagreb) and delivered a very good result with them. And in general, from my point of view, this is the coach with pretty big prospects. But one of the main reasons is that he has a lot of experience in the Ukrainian Championship. He knows the Ukrainian league, he has worked for more than four years in it, he knows the players who are currently in our team – those are both our players and those who have returned from loan. He understands their level, so it won't take much time, with the coach knowing from day one who he is dealing with and what to demand from the guys. The experience and knowledge that he has in terms of the Ukrainian league, in terms of the fact that he is the coach with a European mindset, a European approach to the training process and beyond, and one of the main things is that he practises attacking football, which is our DNA, our signature piece – all these circumstances led us to the fact that we’ve unanimously picked Igor Jovicevic.

- There was a lot of information in the media that Shakhtar were not happy with the FIFA rule regarding foreign players, but Igor Jovicevic joined us. How can you comment on this thing?
- I won’t get down to the nitty-gritty of this matter, but I will say one thing for sure: he did not join us under the FIFA rules that many people mention these days, he did it because his contract had expired. This is the main reason. Had it been the FIFA rule, we’d never have gone for it, because we are in the same situation today and we’ve got lots of issues related to this regulation introduced by FIFA. Therefore, we would’ve never taken that path.

- How was the team’s acquaintance with the new head coach?
- By and large, all the guys have known him for many years, so we didn’t have to tell the guys anything new about Jovicevic. So it was more of a formality: they handed over a T-shirt, applauded and, as they say, full steam ahead.