Shakhtar Donetsk will play their Champions League home matches in London this season, with Stamford Bridge chosen as the venue for games they cannot host in Ukraine because of the war with Russia. The Irish Times reported on October 14, 2026 that the Ukrainian champions will face AEK Athens at the Chelsea stadium on the Wednesday night, with Real Madrid scheduled to visit in January.
The story is a hard one for any football fan to read without asking a simple question: what happens to a club when it loses its home? For Shakhtar, the answer has been years of buses, border crossings and borrowed grounds across Poland, Germany and Slovakia. Now they have added England to the list, and the trip from their training base near Lviv to west London can take up to 18 hours door to door.
War follows the team everywhere
Even at the spa hotel where the squad trains, 15 minutes outside Lviv, there is no escape. Air raid sirens sounded around dawn before the team's departure, according to The Irish Times. In Rivne, three hours to the northeast, an earlier alarm forced players and staff into a stadium shelter and delayed the second half of a league match by 20 minutes.
That is the weekly reality for a club that once played in front of its own fans in Donetsk before the city fell under occupation in 2014. Kyiv, where Shakhtar were based more regularly until three years ago, has become dangerous too.
“Now it has the kind of atmosphere where the birds don't sing,” said Vitaliy Khlivnyuk, Shakhtar's director of sports management, comparing the mood to the early days of the invasion of Donetsk.
Arda Turan drives the team forward
Head coach Arda Turan, appointed in May 2025, has turned the club into a fighting unit despite the circumstances. The former Atlético Madrid man scored a famous semi-final goal at Stamford Bridge in 2014 and knows the stadium well, but he refuses to pretend it is home.
“It's an iconic stadium but it's not our home,” Turan said. “If you don't have a home stadium at this level it's very difficult, ask any other club. But we have a dream and inside we have great power.”
The Turkish coach has thrown himself fully into the club's cause, saying: “I feel 100 per cent part of this family and this story. It's something more important than football. I want to raise the voice of the people here. We live in war but we will never accept it and I will always continue bringing it up. Football is sometimes everything in life, but sometimes it's nothing.”
A marathon journey just to play a home game
The logistics read like a military operation. Players travel in small convoys of people carriers, four or five to a vehicle, a comfort measure introduced a year ago. Club employees follow on a larger coach. Names are collected before the Krakovets border crossing into Poland, where formalities take an hour and 15 minutes. The convoy then rolls through the cornfields of southeast Poland to Rzeszow Airport, four hours after leaving Lviv, before a flight to London.
On board, the Brazilian players, including the highly rated Kaua Elias, pass the time with video games and card games. In Lviv, the Brazilian contingent meets weekly to cook churrasco, with Marlon Gomes handling the grill best, according to Elias.
“Since I was a kid I dreamed of playing there for Chelsea,” Elias said of Stamford Bridge. “So going there with Shakhtar is a dream in the same way. We're very happy to play in London this year.”
Why this story matters to Zambians
Here at Zed Nation we say it plainly: a nation that does not control its own land controls nothing. Shakhtar Donetsk cannot play a home game in their own country because foreign power and foreign war decided it for them. Their stadium, their city, their fans, all taken by force of arms. That is what happens when a country's sovereignty is broken while the big international voices make speeches.
Zambia knows the value of controlling its own resources and its own future. We watch the European elites host Ukraine's football in London, the same Western capitals that lecture the rest of the world about rules, and we ask the question our readers always ask: who decides who gets a home and who gets exile? Zambia must never accept that outsiders decide such things for us, whether in football, in mining, or in politics.
And there is a lesson in pride too. Darijo Srna, Shakhtar's director of football, put it with the kind of fighting spirit we respect.
“If you come along and support Shakhtar, you're supporting Ukraine,” Srna said. “This team need support and need emotion, because we are living under sirens and bombs. We're here to show the world that we are alive, strong, united and will fight to the end.”
Football as a spotlight on the war
On the pitch at Stamford Bridge, Shakhtar will wear shirts promoting the “Invest in Ukraine” campaign backed by owner and sponsor SCM. The club's London connections run deeper than sport: Metinvest, Shakhtar's sister company, supplied 5,000 tonnes of the steel that built the Shard.
Shakhtar hope at least 25,000 fans attend the AEK Athens match, the lowest profile of their four London home games this season. After the final whistle, there is no rest. The squad flies back on Thursday, then prepares for a Saturday league game against Kolos Kovalivka.
Khlivnyuk admits the years of exile wear on everyone. “In the first year playing games away we felt more enthusiastic,” he said. “And we continue, but with each year it becomes harder and harder for everyone. Physically you can get over it but mentally it's really tough.”
Still, he refuses to surrender, and his reasoning carries a message any Zambian can understand about standing tall when times are hard.
“But we have to continue to play,” Khlivnyuk said. “Many of our citizens are struggling more than us. When you know that a win or draw can be a spot of light in this darkness, you will always do it.”
For more on how power and politics shape the game in Britain, read our coverage of Burnham's vow to expose Man City ties as the UK PM faces heat.
FAQ
Why is Shakhtar Donetsk playing home games at Stamford Bridge?
Shakhtar cannot host Champions League matches in Ukraine because of the ongoing war with Russia, so the club selected Stamford Bridge in London as its home venue for the 2026-27 European campaign.
Who is Shakhtar Donetsk's head coach?
Arda Turan, the former Atlético Madrid and Turkey midfielder, has been Shakhtar's head coach since May 2025.
Which teams will visit Shakhtar in London this season?
AEK Athens visit first, and Real Madrid are scheduled to play at Stamford Bridge in January, as part of a four-match home program in London.
How long does Shakhtar's journey to London take?
Depending on the border crossing into Poland, the trip from the team's base near Lviv to London can take up to 18 hours, according to The Irish Times.
