Preview

On January 24, Shakhtar will play their first friendly at the winter training camp in Belek. The opponents of the vice-champions of Ukraine are Austria’s Wolfsberger AC.

The match kicks off at 15:30 Kyiv time. The live streams of all of Shakhtar’s games at the training camp will be available on Shakhtar TV on the official website and on the FC Shakhtar mobile application (Google Play and App Store).

Opponents

Wolfsberger was founded in 1931 and represents the town of Wolfsberg (federal state of Carinthia). In 2012, the club earned promotion to the Austrian Bundesliga, where they ended their debut season in the 5th spot, just one step away from European competitions. In 2015, they repeated this result, and that was enough for them to qualify for the UEFA Europa League.

In 2019 and 2020, our opponents became bronze medalists. They have already played twice in the main part of the Europa League: they ended the 2019/20 season at the bottom of the UEL group featuring Roma, Borussia Monchengladbach and Istanbul Basaksehir. In the 2020/21 season, they advanced from the group including CSKA, Dinamo Zagreb and Feyenoord to the knockout phase from the 2nd spot, having been knocked off the Round of 32 by Tottenham (1-4, 0-4).

Last season, Wolfsberger finished fifth in Austria with a negative goal difference (-10), and this season they are third, being level on points with Sturm. However, of course, they do not have an obvious ambition to climb to the top as both pursuing sides are 14 points adrift of Salzburg’s Red Bull.