A tribute to the last UEFA Cup winners:
Left to right: Valentin Sapronov, Anatoly Rodin, Oleg Kolosov, Yury Zakharov, Vitaly Saveliev, Nickolay Golovko, Genady Snegirev, Vyacheslav Alyabiev, Yury Ananchenko, Boris Strelkov, Vladimir Salkov.
In 1961 Shakther won their first Soviet Cup - and repeated the same in 1962. The squad both years was pretty much the one above. Their city was called Stalino in 1961, but renamed to Donetzk in 1962. An industrial city.
Shakther is the first really provincial club to won a trophy in USSR (if the Cup played in 1944 is not counted: Zenit Leningrad won it, but to my mind it was entirely staged tournament for boosting moral and propaganda. CDKA Moscow - today CSKA - were the other finalists. The match ended 2-1 for Zenit. Now, read the symbolism in the midle of the World War II: Leningrad vs Moscow; heroic survivors of terrible seige vs Red Army, a Cup tournament hastily organized when the war is raging. Small margin for the winners. Conclusions should be obvious - and nothing wrong with them: propaganda is very important during wars.)
Untill the end of the 1950s only Moscow clubs won in USSR - so there was a change, and a big one too - now it was possible even non-capital cities to get a trophy.
In 1961 Shakher beat Torpedo (Moscow) 3-1 at the Cup final.
In 1962 they won 2-0 over Znamya Truda (Orekhovo-Zuevo). Yes, unknown club from even smaller city, which normally played in 3rd Division.
Those were the first successful steps of Shakther (Donetzk) long time ago.
http://footballjourney1.blogspot.com/
de sache le Jeu Avr 30, 2009 12:52 am 
