Shakhtar Donetsk: 10 things to know

Inter's meeting with Shakhtar on Monday will be the third time the two Clubs have met (the report from the games in 2005). Let's take a look at some fun facts on our opponents with a video (at the bottom of the page).

1. Shakhtar were founded in 1936 in the then Soviet Union as “Stakhanovets” after Aleksei Stakhanov, a coal-miner in the Donets Basin region and propaganda celebrity, before adopting the name Shakhtyor a decade later.

2. They won their first Ukrainian league title in 2002 under the guidance of Italian coach Nevio Scala.

3. Former Nerazzurri coach Mircea Lucescu enjoyed a 12-year spell at the club and even led the Miners to European glory in 2009, when they beat Werder Bremen 2-1 in the UEFA Cup final in Istanbul.

4. Shakhtar have been attracting Brazilian talents for some time now: Willian, Fernandinho, Douglas Costa, Elano, Luiz Adriano and Alex Teixeira are just a few of the South American giants' products to play for the club. Currently, there are eleven Brazilian players in the squad.

5. Due to the Russo-Ukrainian war, the club have been playing across three different cities since 2014 – Lviv, Kharkiv and more recently, Kiev, where they were also forced to move their team HQ and training facilities. The beautiful and modern Donbass Arena has remained unused and closed to the public ever since.

6. Inter are unbeaten against Ukrainian teams, with a record of 5 wins and 3 draws in 8 games, and eliminated Shakhtar from the Champions League qualifying round in 2005, advancing into the group stage. They have played Dinamo Kiev four times (two wins, two draws, and Dnipro twice (two wins).)

7. Shakhtar, on the other hand, have a record of 7 wins, 2 draws and 15 defeats against Italian teams, having faced Juventus, Milan, Lazio, Roma, Napoli, Vicenza and Atalanta in Europe.

8. Current head coach Luis Castro succeeded his Portuguese compatriot Paulo Fonseca on the Shakhtar bench as the latter departed for Roma last summer.

9. The Ukrainian champions are unbeaten in the five games they've played in this season’s Europa League, winning four and scoring at least 2 goals in each of them with an average of 2-8 goals per game.

10. Just like Romelu Lukaku, Junior Moraes has scored six goals in European competitions this season, and topped the Ukrainian Premier League goalscoring chart with 20 goals to his name.