Arda Turan, photo FC Shakhtar Donetsk November 23, 2025, 10:36 am

The day before, Shakhtar Donetsk defeated Obolon Kyiv in the away match of the thirteenth round of the Ukrainian Premier League.

Obolon — Shakhtar 0:6 Video of goals and review of the UPL match

After the end of the game, the head coach of “miners” Arda Turan commented on the performance of his own team.

“First of all, I would like to emphasize that before this confrontation, we understood the level of our opponent and always treat any of our opponents with respect.

As for Oboloni, they have already proven themselves both this season and in previous years as an opponent who can cause problems for many teams in the top echelon, especially when they play at home. That’s why I’m very happy with the way the game went in the first half – if I’m not mistaken, we only allowed one shot through our goal.

The goal taken at the end of the first half was also very important. If we talk about our game plan, it was important to place, for example, Bondarenko and Neverton on the same line, while at the same time Pedro Enrique tried to move into the middle so that we could put additional pressure on the opponent’s goal.

After the red card and removal of the opponent, when it was already 3:0, we tried to some extent to save the current score, as well as our players for the future, because there are a lot of away games ahead.

This will be the last game month of the calendar year, we will have a lot of travel and, in general, a lot of difficult matches. At the same time, apart from planning for the physical condition of the players, we also need to plan very well all the nuances with transfers and how we can best keep and bring our players to the ideal condition.

So our win is very important both in the context of continuing to build our confidence and in general to be able to build on a better foundation to finish this year.

I agree one hundred percent that it was the second goal that closed the game. Indeed, the second goal scored early in the second half gave us a lot of confidence. Of course, he did not decide until the end of the matches, because, as I emphasized, the opponent knows how to create significant problems when playing at home, but, of course, this goal made the further course of the game easier for us.

Even after that it might have been somewhat difficult for us, but the following goals made it easier for us in this confrontation. I’m really pleased with the way my players add from match to match, I want to give them my sincerest compliments and praise today.

First of all, there is one thing I would like to emphasize: any team that plays in the national championship must focus only on internal affairs. Of course, we treat all our competitors for the championship this season with respect: LNZ, Dynamo, Polissya, and, I believe, they should be interested only in their own affairs.

So it seems to me that players of our level do not need any additional motivation in the form of points lost by our competitors. And I’m really glad that they were able to focus on our game and get a positive result tonight.

No, before the start of the match I could not count on such a victory. As I emphasized, I am convinced that Obolon is really a very high-quality team with decent performance on the football field. Yes, we expected to play our best football, but we ourselves did not expect to play so well,” said the Turkish specialist.

Next week, Shakhtar Donetsk will first visit Ireland’s Shamrock Rovers in the UEFA Conference League, after which they will play a home match against Kryvyi Rih Kryvbas.