On the eve of Shakhtar Donetsk’s Europa League second leg semi-final against Sevilla (read the match preview here) news emerged regarding the future of head coach, Mircea Lucescu. The FC Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk blog FCDnipro.com reported on Wednesday that current Dnipro head coach Myron Markevych had held talks with the board of Shakhtar Donetsk regarding the possibility of leading Shakhtar in the new season.
Meanwhile, Markevych, when speaking to the Shakhtar Donetsk blog Shakhtar.info has denied talking to Shakthar Donetsk. On the other hand, Markevych has been repeatedly spotted at Shakhtar Donetsk games in Lviv and it is entirely possible that he could be one of the leading candidates at Shakhtar, should Lucescu decide to conclude his career at the end of the season.
As Futbolgrad reported on April 16, Markevych announced that he is going to leave Dnipro at the end of the season because of the club’s ban on international football due to outstanding debts.
One of the candidates to replace Markevych at Dnipro is the Angolan coach Litio Vidigal, who has had outstanding results at FC Arouca in Portugal this season. Another option now appears to be Dmytro Mykhaylenko, who currently works as a youth coach at the club.
Mykhaylenko would be a likely candidate given the fact that Dnipro will most probably be in complete rebuild mode next season, as several of the club’s top players have already announced that they will leave Dnipropetrovsk due to the lack of international football next season.
On March 3, Tribuna compiled a list of players that could leave Dnipro because of the ban on European football. Not included on the list was the Brazilian Léo Matos. This absence from the list, according to FCDnipro.com, is due to the fact that the 30-year-old Brazilian had already terminated his contract due to the financial problems at the club. According to Tribuna, Matos will join PAOK FC on free transfer in the new season.
Matos will certainly not be the last player to leave Dnipro in the coming months, as the club continues to be besieged by financial uncertainty caused by its owner Ihor Kolomoyskyi who has distanced himself from Dnipro and has refused to pay the club’s outstanding debts. There have been suggestions that the club could either be sold or even face bankruptcy.
Meanwhile at Shakhtar, the rumours about Markevych’s future come at the worst possible moment as Shakhtar are trying to prepare themselves for the most important match in the club’s recent history.
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