Ukraine’s Shakhtar tackles FIFA on $42M transfer market case

GENEVA: A $42 million claim for compensation from FIFA will be tough for Shakhtar Donetsk to win, the Ukrainian club’s chief executive acknowledged Friday, though a clear message had been sent by taking the case to sport’s highest court. Shakhtar are determined not to be a pushover in the January transfer window. Not after the club believed they lost control of too many players who left Ukraine this year as other teams gained from FIFA’s emergency transfer rules during the Russian invasion.

“We will not accept that our players should be sold at discounts,” Shakhtar CEO Sergei Palkin told AP, one day after helping to present the club’s case against FIFA at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland. Shakhtar values their most prized asset at 100 million euros ($106 million) with Premier League leader Arsenal most strongly linked to winger Mykhaylo Mudryk. “I don’t want European clubs to use our situation to devalue our players,” Palkin said in a telephone interview.

“That is the worst scenario.” Players who were under Shakhtar’s control when Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 — one day before the national league was to resume after a winter break — are now with clubs in Brazil, England, France and Italy. Those clubs could avoid paying a transfer fee to Shakhtar, whose 2021-22 season was abandoned along with the rest of domestic soccer in Ukraine.