The statues of the legends of FC Shakhtar have been set up to be permanently on display at the club’s museum located at the Donbass Arena. They will meet the visitors inside the museum rooms dedicated to different periods in the history of the Miners.

Thus, Vladimir Sal’kov and the Cup-winning coach Oleg Oshenkov represent the 1960s, the Miners' forward Vitaliy Starukhin, as the best footballer in the USSR and the top scorer of the 1979 League – the 1970s, and the squad’s top performer according to the number of the goals scored and the long-time captain of the Orange & Black Mikhail Sokolovskiy - stands for the period of the 1980s. It is curious that there is no footballer image in the room referring to the most recent period in Ukrainian history...since they plan to engage the team supporters in choosing the hero.

Every statue weighs about 100 kg, while the heights of the images correspond to the players’ real ones. The height of Salkov’s figure, for instance, fully reflects the star’s being actually 174 cm tall. Nikolai Zagrebnoy, the renowned sculptor from Donetsk and the author of the above artwork, told us that those pieces of art were made according to the historic photographs and that every sculpture took him near two months to complete.

’When working on them, I did my best to feature a player’s individual character, to capture the traits which are characteristic to one person only. Good many days were spent to learn historical sources, carefully analyse the photographic features which were the basis for making the statutes,” the master explained.

Andrei Babeshko, the Head of Museum & Tours Department at the Donbass Arena, noted that the images of the iconic players in the museums of football clubs were not uncommon. To name a few – the English Arsenal FC and Real Madrid CF can boast similar exhibits.

”The statues will be positioned so that every visitor will be able to have a picture with a legend taken as a memento,” he specified. “Now we are about to complete the final preparations and the museum will fling its doors open to the fans in a month or so. The holders of the season cards for the home matches of FC Shakhtar Donetsk will be the first visitors to the museum.”

Donbass Arena Media Centre