UEFA Cup Final: The Day the World Turned Day-Glo

By: Dan | May 21st, 2009

Shakhtar Donetsk 2 – Werder Bremen 1

Although it was an engaging contest, I do not believe that the 2009 UEFA Cup final is going to have everyone who compiled their best of lists during the last couple of weeks scrambling to get any quick rewrites done. Werder Bremen, depleted through injury and suspension, were reduced to little more than physical battling. Although they produced a herculean effort to keep the match close, Shakhtar Donetsk were deserved winners.

Shakhtar took control of the game from the outset, putting Werder under sustained pressure, including an early near miss for Luiz Adriano, even in the face of some robust challenges. Bremen’s positional defending did not produce the same success, as they looked especially vulnerable to raids down their right flank, where only a lack of supporting runs kept Shakhtar from scoring. Werder did not look any more comfortable dealing with counter attacks, as the Donetsk forwards frequently found themselves with vast swaths of space in front of them. This nervous and awkward positional play cost Werder in the 25th minute, when Luiz Adriano touched a long pass that Bremen’s makeshift central pairing were totally unprepared for into space and chipped over Tim Wiese.

Werder occasionally produced some aerial balls into the box that slightly troubled Shakhtar, but mainly threatened through set pieces. Indeed, it was from a 35th minute free kick that Bremen equalized, as Andrei Pyatov could only touch Naldo’s piledriver into the net.

The second half did not see any dramatic shift in the action; Shakhtar continued to control possession and attack. Bremen occasionally looked slightly more composed going forward, and did actually force Pyatov into a fine save from a deflected header late in the game. But the second half was mostly a story of Werder creating little and Shakhtar tiring. The game eventually leveled off, and extra time became a near inevitability.

It was in extra time that one of Shakhtar’s moves down the right side finally paid off. Instead of having to find a teammate across the entirety of the penalty area, Jadson was well placed near Darijo Srna to receive a pass and put a soft effort past Wiese. The error was particularly unfortunate for the German goalkeeper, as his efforts were largely responsible for Werder still having any chance to take home the trophy. This proved to be the end of the line for Werder Bremen, as Shakhtar, after nearly adding a third, killed off the game and clinched the first post-Soviet trophy for Ukrainian football.

Shakhtar’s victory, like Zenit’s last season and CSKA Moscow’s in 2005, does bring the issue of finances back into the limelight. The past twenty years have, as a whole, not been great times for Eastern European football; the transition into the colossal business of international football has gone better for some clubs than others. Shakhtar are definitely one of the fortunate clubs in that scenario. Like Germany’s Hoffenheim, they have been the recipient of invested wealth by a local minded benefactor. They can hardly be held up as a continent wide model to smaller teams or as some kind of moral paragon, but ultimately, it is refreshing to see big money go towards the long term building of a club and not smash and grab instant gratification. In the best of all possible worlds, this type of long term investment and stability would allow more clubs with Shakhtar’s potential to compete on the European stage, and add some more of the variety that I am sure we all sorely miss.