Shakhtar — Rijeka, photo FC Shakhtar Donetsk December 18, 2025, 11:56 p.m

Shakhtar Donetsk approached the final round of the main round of the UEFA Conference League in a fairly winning position. The team of Arda Turan already knew for sure that they would play in the playoffs in the spring, but how early the path to relegation would start for them was still to be determined by the result of the nominally home match in Krakow against the current Croatian champion Rijeka.

Opponents led by Victor Sanchez, meanwhile, have scored eight points in the previous five meetings, due to which they generally had quite a good chance to grab a place in the preliminary round of the playoffs, and even take a shot at something more in the event of a victory over the “miners”. So both sides had something to lose.

However, immediately following the course of the confrontation, such scenarios began to emerge in the tournament table that even a victory in this meeting could not seem like a winning result to Shakhtar. Because on a parallel course, such teams as London’s Crystal Peles and Italy’s Fiorentina did not achieve what they wanted, and therefore could be among potential rivals of the Ukrainian club in the early stages of the playoffs.

And it is from this point of view that it is worth looking at what happened during the course of the game. Because the people of Donetsk started as if they wanted to win this match, creating moments for Marlon and Ocheretko already in the starting ten minutes, but they never beat the opponent’s goalkeeper. And then Marlon unexpectedly got a muscle injury and asked for a substitution, after which his path risked to be repeated by Eginalda and Vinicius even before the break, but fate took Turan away from additional forced substitutions.

While Shakhtar struggled with these injuries, the opposition managed to take the game away from their own goal and keep the Miners from creating further danger before the break. It is likely that during the break some calculations of possible scenarios were already carried out, and therefore the Turan team at the beginning of the second half tried to open the score twice more with the help of Eginaldo’s moments, but he first shot at the goalkeeper from the right wing of the free-kick, and then did not beat the goalkeeper with a signature header.

At the same time, all these plans of the Donetsk people had a chance to go to the trash, if Fesyun’s mistake on the ball in the 49th minute in front of his own penalty area, when the ball was simply gifted to Adu-Adjeya, would have ended with a shot in the lower left corner, and not near the post, where the ball rolled in the end. It’s a pity that the rest of the game almost until the final whistle was not full of scoring opportunities, and since Eginalda in his next attempt to close the cross from the wing from his partner in the 87th minute did not hit the goal, nobody scored that evening.

The next opponents of Shakhtar Donetsk in the UEFA Conference League may be Polish Lech, Turkish Samsunspor, Finnish KuPS or Macedonian Shkendia.

Rijeka: Zlomislych — Orech (Lasickas, 59), Husych, Radelych, Devetak — Vignato (Butych, 66), Dantash, Ndotskit (Yankovic, 82), Menalo (Bogojevic, 66) — Fruk (Chop, 83), Adu-Adzei.

Warning: Bondar — Orech, Radelych