It says a lot that we were able to beat both sides of Madrid even if they were struggling. These are titans of Europe, winners of the Champions League, and there we are being the better team for 90 minutes.

Many familiar faces, some friends, some turned foes. Rudenko is already making his mark on his second team in the challenge. I reckon a fair aim for this first season is to beat the 14th of last season.

All we really have to do is believe. You're a new manager in a team that was struggling to stay up and you haven't had a window to bring in any players, it's natural that we'd be struggling and it's a very positive sign that we managed to beat Bilbao and Villareal.

CHAMPIOOOOOOONS🧡🖤

After so many seasons in the cold far north of Iceland and Norway, then the freezing plains of Ukraine, being on a nice, sunny holiday island is a welcome change. Let's hope the sun will rise on Las Palmas, just as it does on Gran Canaria.

It's been an absolute privelidge watching this team go from zero to hero. Thanks for taking everyone on such a spectacular journey. Farewell, Shakhtar Donetsk, I'll see you all in Spain!

"It is better to fail aiming high, than to succeed aiming low. And we here have set our sights very high, so high in fact that even failure will have in it an echo of glory." - Bill Nicholson We tasted the bitterness of defeat, the wrechedness of having victory torn from our grasp, but all it did was motivate us to do better, to aim higher and take the glory with both hands; it was nearly snatched away from us a second time but we just wouldn't let that happen and on a warm summer night in Barcelona we finally crowned ourselves the champions of Europe, oh yes we'll sing that! And a hats off to Alexandr Kuzminykh, we thought he wasn't up for this team and he proved us wrong, we thought he was slowing down and couldn't perform anymore, he proved us wrong again, and in his final ever game he played his part in writing Shakhtar Donetsk into the history books. One more battle left to fight, one more trophy left to win, farewell Kuzminykh, farewell Shakhtar, still we march on.

Fortune favors the bold. And I can think of nothing bolder than taking a team that were once labelled as 1000:1 outsiders all the way to the Champions League final. Come on, Shakhtar!

And so we soon come to the end of our mighty journey in Ukraine. We look back on big wins and big losses, we took on titans and won, we came so close once before just to have it cruelly wrestled from our grasp, we endured great heartbreak but there was a burning desire to win and a hope that never died. We head to Barcelona, to the greatest stage in the world for a second time, we'll face a worthy opponent, but we know one thing. We can win this.

We've beat Man City before, all we have to do is repeat what we know we can do.

Well, that was a convincing win. By the looks of it PSG and Chelsea didn't make it out and with this impeccable form it's surely just up to us to go and take it.

I said that we'd be able to make top 4 with this team, well look at us go! Surely that utter dismantling of Monaco is signs of things to come and there'll be 16 playoff teams all dreading the idea of winning their playoffs only to come up against us in the Ro16.

No shame in drawing with Liverpool, 13 points from 5 games is very impressive. We've got to go get Kuzminykh his Champions League medal before he hangs up his boots for good!

The Champions League registration rules are indeed dumb, but I reckon we won't have a problem getting top 8 even without Ikache, maybe even top 4 would be doable. This team is absolutely world class and surely the only difficult game there is Liverpool.

"Is there a fire drill? Is there a fire drill?" - Shaktar fans to Dnipro fans at the Super Cup final. You'd think more of them would turn up seeing as this is the only time of the season they can see their team win something, meanwhile our stands are packed to the rafters with the orange faithful. Shows just how much of a cultural impact our recent successes have had on Ukraine. The players might not see our potential but the fans certainly do.

Win the league title comfortably in your biggest rival's stadium: ✅ Win the Ukrainian Cup for the umpteenth time: ✅ Shevchenko goal: ✅ Kuzminykh goal:✅ Business as usual here in Ukraine

That's just... Argh! Incredibly frustrating! Those were chances that a team of champions would've put away. The three back formation looked interesting, the third defender would provide more defensive cover and allow the wingbacks to get forward and support the attack, maybe something to consider but the 4-4-2 is working well at the moment.

I said it yesterday, but you can always count on our Skipper when you need a goal. Surely he's a legend of Shaktar Donetsk by now, definetly he's a legend of the Corners of Europe challenge and he must be nailed on as a starter for that team of the challenge. Our number 10 with that 10/10 performance.

You can always count on our skipper when you need a goal!

A sloppy performance from us today, seemed like we had Darwin Nunez and Nicholas Jackson as our striker pair today. Those two late goals are just so frustrating, we'll need to put in the work to get top 8.

Top 8 surely has to be nailed on, not too bad of a draw and we know the team has it in them. Nice to get one over Chelsea again.

FM transfer AI at it's finest. Needs a big adjustment in FM25.

You know the episode will be fire when Viva la Vida is in the music section of the description! We are unstoppable! Arsenal, look out because nobody, absolutely nobody can stand in the way of this team of champions!

Winning mentality, we kept pushing, never gave up, the tactical change paid off and we match our best ever result. We've beat one side of the El Classico, why can't we beat the other and send ourselves to our first ever Champions League final?

What a display that home leg was! That's a true champion's reaction to failing to make top 8! Who says we can't go do it again against Barca?

Some sloppy bluffing lost us our opening hand, our last chance in the casino of Monaco was to go all-in, we won the hand with four of a kind to their pair but it just wasn't enough to recoup our losses.

Revenge! Revenge! Revenge! We went to Stamford Bridge, they hit us hard but we stayed the course and hit them back, then took advantage of their weaknesses to bring home the win, proper winning mentality that.

Some tough games in our league phase, hopefully we don't meet the same fate as last time against Chelsea.

The Ukrainian Super Cup just seems to be our bogey competition, but no matte, with that exciting attack we can go on to win bigger and better things

Loved both the sequences with Viva la Vida so far, especially that fantastic goal in the Conference League final. Spectacular cinematography and a spectacular moment.

I'm not often speechless, but a 9-0 loss from a team that recently made the semifinals... Not making top 8 was maybe just a bit of bad luck but this is a crash back down to reality. I guess when you buy every single player in the world you might accidentally sign some decent talent every so often?

Farewell, Mr Mauro Couto. Devoted servant of the Corners of Europe challenge, only player to follow us to 3 clubs. Instrumental in the Conference League win at Tromso. Surely a shoe-in for that right wing spot in the team of the challenge. The channel will not quickly forget his name.

It'll be a shame to wave goodbye to club legend Kuzminykh but if he has to go he has to go. Complete demolishing in both games, brilliant moves and shows why you have that 5 star reputation.

Kuzminykh, most definitely in the Corners of Europe hall of fame, Shevchenko deserves to be there too. Legends of the challenge and no doubt legends of the continent when we win the Champions League with them.

Textbook epsidoe. I believe the transfer AI weights club and league reputation too high and results too low. I guess it's sort of fair as players would rather go play in a massive league for a massive team but it's a bit ridiculous at the level it's happening in this save.

We can't pretend that wasn't disappointing, especially how close we came and who it was. But the team has given us plenty of reasons to be proud this season and you get the vibe that we're knocking on the door next season.

This isn't the script of a team who fights all this way to yet again fall to Leipzig. We're going to get the job done this time, we're going to our first ever Champions League final!

Shakhtar is massive! Kuzminykh is massive! What a performance and with this momentum you get a feel we could even go beat Porto. Whenever they build a wall to stop us we just grow taller.

We needed a bit of help from Brighton but that's us over the line! Surely we can make it to the quarters and maybe even the semis if the luck goes our way, we just have to head to Munich and ruin some days.

BIBLICAL SCENES!!! What a finish! We'll need some luck but top 8 is so on!

They have tycoon owner mate in real life

Sucks we couldn't take anything from Sociedad but the true goal is obvious. The FM gods want us to go get revenge on Newcastle.

Surely, surely we have the team to go get to the quarters if not further. It's incredible the amount of talent we're assembling in the far east of Europe.

"The rule" is so frustrating and self-defeating, it's meant to promote development of domestic talent but all it does is handicap clubs in Europe. the Premier League is so massive because it doesn't have those rules and as a result English talent is great. Still, we'll push past it and win, somehow.

It's easy to point at the Newcastle game and sure, we lost possibly 3 points from it, but we should've been able to get past it and we weren't good enough to do that. The attack was wasteful in front of goal, we gave the ball away too easily and let them have some easy shots. Still, we can say that with a bit of luck in the right way we're a top 8 team and even when we were far from our best it still took them an extra time goal to beat us.

top 👍

The FM player and transfer AI is the worst part of the game, hopefully it's better in FM25. It's just ridiculous. Proper dominant performance home and away and what says we can't repeat it against Leipzig?

We've certainly been to some prestigious grounds here in the Corners of Europe, San Siro twice, Anfield, Old Trafford, Camp Nou, the Velodrome in Marseille. Not forgetting wherever they played that Conference League final. Bit disappointing to not make the autos but we should get an easy playoff which who knows, could give us some match sharpness. By the way, Newcastle's Liverpool tie you thought was a UCL game was actually the Carabao Cup.

That was never a red, never ever ever a red. Ref must be colorblind or a Newcastle fan. The 7 foreigners rule is definitely a handicap and makes things a lot harder for us, but in the UPL at least every team has that handicap.