a one-year contract extension, but
Navas’s home-town club had come
calling and he went back to Seville.
In the three years since he returned
to Andalusia, Navas has missed only 17
games through injury, which is a good
record for a thirtysomething. He is the
captain of the team and vies with Dani
Carvajal, of Real Madrid, for the right-
back slot in the Spain team.
“Jesús is a figurehead for our club and
our team,” Julen Lopetegui, the SevilleOle Gunnar Solskjaer’s squad overhaul
is gathering pace with Andreas Pereira
and Tahith Chong expected to depart
in the coming weeks.
Pereira, the 24-year-old Brazilian,
has instructed his representatives to
find him a new club after he failed to
earn a regular place in Solskjaer’s
starting XI.
He is understood to be of interest to
Benfica, as well as a number of German
and Spanish clubs.
The attacking midfielder joined
United from PSV Eindhoven in 2012.
He has made 75 appearances for the
club but has found first-team action
If Seville beat Manchester United and
Jesús Navas goes on to lift the Europa
League trophy, he should probably pick
up the phone to Pep Guardiola and
offer him a word of thanks.
It was Guardiola who suggested that
Navas shift his position from right wing
to right back three seasons ago when he
was at Manchester City. With less strain
on Navas’s body, the move to full back
has prolonged the player’s career and he
is now one of the most important figures
in the Seville team who face Manches-
ter United in the semi-final tomorrow in
Cologne even at the age of 34.
Guardiola, the City manager, had a
torrid time with his full backs during
the 2016-17 campaign, his first in
England. Pablo Zabaleta and Bacary
Sagna were past their best, so during
the second half of the season, the Cata-
lan suggested that Navas try his hand
there. Guardiola was so impressed by
Navas’s adaptability that he offered him
for United rebuild
Sport
the times | Saturday August 15 2020 2GS 9
Navas has Pep to thank for rebirth
manager, said. “He’s a guy that has
played for so many years and is still
playing at the highest level. He also has
the excitement, desire, ambition and
frustrations of a young player. We’re all
delighted with Jesús the player and, of
course, delighted with Jesús the person,
too.”
Navas spent most of his four years at
City, whom he joined from Seville in
2013, on the wing and he still likes to get
forward. when he can. “I feel really
comfortable there,” Navas said. “I’m
someone who likes to get up in attack.
When I play in this position [full back],
I’m able to find space and I’ve got the
whole pitch in front of me.”
Navas will be proud of his team’s
achievements if they win a record sixth
Europa League trophy. He comes from
the city, came through the club’s
academy and has played a record-
breaking 518 times for Seville. “Playing
for the club means absolutely every-
thing to me,” he said. “It’s where I grew
up and took my first steps in the game
and became a footballer.”Shakhtar Donetsk:
the club shunned
by their own fans
The last time that Shakhtar Donetsk
reached a European final — a 2-1 win
after extra time against Werder
Bremen in the Uefa Cup in 2009 —
the occasion was tinged with hubris.
The day after the game, as the team
celebrated with a huge rally in central
Donetsk, the country’s soon-to-be-
elected president Viktor Yanukovych
took the stage in an orange and black
scarf and heralded “the dawn of a
new, united Ukraine”. Yet his
presidency was to begin a fatal
countdown, one that would place
Donetsk at the centre of a devastating
proxy war and run Shakhtar out of
town for good.
These days, Donetsk lives in a
permanent crisis. Yet its former team
face Inter Milan in the Europa
League semi-final on Monday as
hopeful underdogs. They won the
Ukrainian league this season by a
canter, even by their usual standards.
The head coach, Luís Castro, a
charismatic tactician from Portugal
who replaced his compatriot and
serial title-winner Paulo Fonseca last
year, has the strongest Shakhtar side
for years at his disposal.
Júnior Moraes, the naturalised
Brazilian striker, has scored more
than 50 goals in two seasons since
signing from Dynamo Kiev, while his
countryman Marlos has terrorised full
backs domestically and in Europe for
six seasons. Of the homegrown crop,
the Ukraine internationals Taras
Stepanenko and Yevhen Konoplyanka
provide a gritty central spine. It is a
formula that has served the club well
for years — South American flair
meets eastern industry — and is
virtually the only legacy that has been
sustained since the crisis.
In 2010, the pro-Moscow
presidential candidate Yanukovych,
whose political rise had been largely
funded by Rinat Akhmetov, the
Shakhtar owner and local Donbass
industrialist, was adored in Donetsk.
He supported the people’s team and
he shared their desire to see Ukraine
defy the nationalist government of
the president, Viktor
Yushchenko, and move
closer to Russia — in
eastern Slavic folklore,
the “elder brother” of the
two nations.
His election victory, in
the wake of Shakhtar’s
Uefa Cup success,
and entrenched
dominance of the
domestic league
confirmed that
the east of the
country had won
the upper hand,
not just in politics
but in football too.
“People go to football,look at the Brazilian strikers and do
not ask where Akhmetov got the
money to buy them,” said one
Donetsk resident. “When Jádson
scored against Werder [in the Uefa
Cup final], I was jubilant too. At that
moment, I would probably also vote
for Yanukovych.”
But the split his election victory
had caused was already fatal. When
in November 2013, under pressure
from the Kremlin, Yanukovych made
a U-turn on a deal to implement
closer ties between Kiev and the
European Union, pro-Western
Ukrainians in the capital revolted.
Yanukovych, the darling of the east,
was ousted from power by a furious
crowd of half a million demanding a
break with Moscow and a new
European path. And it did not go
unnoticed by anti-nationalist counter-
protesters that hard-right football
ultras, spearheaded by Dynamo Kiev
hooligans, were a conspicuous
organised presence at the Maidan, the
central square in Kiev.
By May 2014, Russian-backed
militants in the country’s southeast
had retaliated, declaring the cities of
Donetsk and Luhansk to be
independent states seeking political
union with Russia. Within days, the
Shakhtar club had fled what was now
a war zone, taking refuge in the
western city of Lviv, and they havenever returned. “The people have
disowned Akhmetov and Shakhtar for
abandoning us,” says Oleg Antipov, a
former Shakhtar press secretary, who
chose to stay behind when Kiev
bombed the city in 2014. Full of
nostalgia for the Soviet past, he
supports the separatist government.
But his love for Shakhtar is gone. “His
[Akhmetov’s] money and influence
could have helped us. But he ran.
What he did for the city means
nothing now.”
In the park next to Shakhtar’s now
abandoned Donbass Arena, a
supporter has scratched graffiti
damning Akhmetov into a bench. “It’s
something like ‘F*** you Rinat,’ ” says
Antipov. “Actually, it’s more offensive
than that.”
In the space of
a decade, the
people have gone
the distance; from
loving Shakhtar, to
hating them, to a
listless indifference.
“It’s all changed now,”
says Vyacheslav
Sharafudinov, once Donetsk’s
top football commentator.
“They’re not Shakhtar
Donetsk any more. They
are Shakhtar Ukraine. And
Ukraine can keep them.”
If Shakhtar beat the odds
and claim Ukraine’s first
European trophy in a decade, it’s
hard to see where the adoring
crowds will be drawn from to
welcome them home.The political divide in
Ukraine has left its top
club and Europa League
hopefuls in a vacuum,
says Robert O’Connor
Paul Hirst
Pereira likely to join Old Trafford exodus
hard to come by of late. Pereira started
almost half of United’s league games
this season but the £67.7 million transfer
of Bruno Fernandes from Sporting
Lisbon to Old Trafford in January has
pushed him down the pecking order.
Pereira has only started two league
games since Fernandes joined, the last
one coming in February when United
drew 1-1 with Club Bruges in the Europa
League. Pereira is contracted to United
until 2023.
Chong, meanwhile, is expected to
complete a ten-month loan move to
Werder Bremen in the next 48 hours.
The 20--year-old could still have a
future at United — his contract expires
in 2022 — but Solskjaer feels the winger
will benefit from playing moreregularly next season. Chong has made
only 13 appearances this term, ten of
which came from the bench.
He has agreed to join Bremen and the
deal is expected to go through in the
next few days, even though he is
presently with the United squad in
Cologne for the Europa League finals.
There is no loan fee involved but
the Bundesliga club will pay the
majority of the Dutchman’s wages
during his loan spell.
Solskjaer wants to trim his squad to
make way for up to three new signings.
He has already discarded Alexis
Sánchez, who has joined Inter Milan
permanently, and will listen to offers for
Phil Jones, Marcos Rojo, Jesse Lingard
and Chris Smalling this summer.Paul Hirst
They are not Donetsk
any more. They are
Shakhtar Ukraine — and
Ukraine can keep themShakhtar’s Darijo Srna
with the Uefa CupNavas won two Europa League titles
with Seville earlier in his careerMATTHEW PETERS/GETTY IMAGESThe in-form
Fernandes
could be key
for United
tomorrowGoals for Fernandes, the Europa
League’s top scorer. Seville’s
Munir and United’s Mason
Greenwood are chasing on five7