“… It’s Monday evening and Shakhtar Donetsk’s chief executive officer sounds mildly disappointed that the team didn’t score a couple more goals against Livyi Bereh in the Ukrainian club’s first game back after the winter break. ‘We played well but we were not so lucky,’ Palkin adds. Shakhtar are third in the Ukrainian Premier League, eight points behind the leaders Dynamo Kyiv with a game in hand. Well, not a full game, actually. More like 39 minutes, and Shakhtar already have the lead courtesy of a goal from a player who is no longer at the club. Three days before Shakhtar were due to travel to the city of Kryvyi Rih for a game against Kryvbas at the start of September, the hotel where they had planned to stay was hit by a Russian missile, destroying the building and killing two people. A sense of panic spread among the Shakhtar squad, their families, and the players’ agents, leading to Palkin receiving a wave of anxious messages asking what the club proposed to do. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
Shakhtar Donetsk’s Sergei Palkin on keeping Ukrainian football ‘alive’, FIFA ‘ignorance’ and Mudryk case
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“The sight of a goalkeeper gathering a simple shot, collapsing to the ground and taking an age to part with the ball is an infuriating one if your team are trailing. If your team are leading, it is a beautiful form of expressive art. The room for such theatrics is set to be squeezed, however, as the International Football Association Board (IFAB) has acted on what it sees as the rising trend of goalkeepers getting away with time-wasting. 
“Jean-Philippe Mateta had his ‘life endangered’ in a challenge from Millwall goalkeeper Liam Roberts that left the Crystal Palace striker with a head injury, his club’s chairman Steve Parish said. Mateta was given oxygen on the pitch following the challenge in Saturday’s FA Cup fifth-round tie, before being taken off on a stretcher from the field of play in a neck brace and being directly taken to an ambulance, with play stopped for over 10 minutes. Millwall’s Roberts was shown a straight red card after the video assistant referee (VAR) recommended on-field referee Michael Oliver to review the decision, after the goalkeeper was initially not punished for the incident. …”
Scissors Kick 