Shakhtar's training camp in UAE: matches, numbers and egoism

On 16 and 17 January, Shakhtar will work in the UAE in accordance with an almost identical programme. In the morning, Shakhtar will be training, and in the evening, they will be playing a friendly.

Today, the Ukrainian champions will face an Egyptian outfit Zamalek in their opening match at Matchworld Cup 2013. The game will start at 18:00 EET, and will be broadcast live on Football TV channel. Tomorrow, on 17 January, the Pitmen will play a friendly fixture against Lokomotiv Tashkent. The match kicks off at 14:00 EET – you can follow all the action via text coverage on our website.

The game with Lokomotiv will be held on the pitch of the hotel complex, but it will take our team about 15-10 minutes to get for today’s encounter with Zamalek. Al-Jazira Mohammed Bin Zayed Stadium, named in honour of the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, was radically updated in the period from 2006 to 2009, and now can hold a little over 42 thousand spectators. After repair it twice held the Club World Cup – Catalonia’s Barcelona and Inter Milan forged their victories there.

Obviously, at the training camp, Mister intends to use squad rotation. Players, who will not play today, with Zamalek, will have an additional training session. It is already known that Shakhtar will play in the orange and black kit, with the Egyptian team wearing a white jersey.

Those who like guessing about the newcomers’ shirt numbers will now receive from us a piece of information. Brazilian Taison chose the 28th - now it is his permanent number. During the training camp, Mykola Ishchenko will have No 25, but is likely to wear the number 23 shirt in official matches.

This morning, the players, who for some reason had missed part of preparation, were training individually: Alan Patrick, Willian and Marko Devic. Before training session Mircea Lucescu had a meeting with the whole team, and once again emphasized the importance of training camps. According to Mister, now is a defining moment for careers of many players, so it is necessary to work hard.

The head coach encourages all the players to be egoists in training, because everyone is responsible for his condition, but during the game Shakhtar must be a real team – intelligent actions, solidarity and mutual assistance are important factors.