Donetsk club’s shattering 0:7 defeat of BATE by the middle of the first half grinds the team’s nose into the home pitch and inspires despair from fans. The meeting was fateful for both squads in the current Champions League.
BATE has never missed so many goals
Everyone understood this perfectly. Mircea Lucescu — the head coach of Shakhtar — noted just before the match at Borisov-Arena that the third and fourth (usually paired) games in the Group Stage are decisive, adding that Spanish Athletic Bilbao had underestimated BATE, leading to its defeat. From the first minutes of its match, Shakhtar coach Lucescu was clearly applying strategy learnt from watching Spanish Athletic’s errors. By halftime, the ‘Brazilian core of Donetsk club’ had managed all that had been achieved by Porto across a whole match at the beginning of the tournament. Moreover, unlike the Portuguese players, Shakhtar mercilessly and with some mockery trampled the Belarusian champion into its own pitch. The referee awarded a penalty in the 83rd minute, as if rewarding Luiz Adriano’s four goals and the shattering of BATE’s defence. Moreover, this was the second penalty (performed by Luiz Adriano) during the match and the referee even ordered it to be retaken after seeing an infringement. Both Adriano’s kicks proved accurate, hitting the right-hand corner of the Belarusian goalkeeper’s net.
Fans began abandoning the stands, dismayed at Adriano’s five goals. Discontent even obliged those policing the match to temporarily suspend the game, reminding BATE fans to avoid chanting racist slogans in their despair. The team now faces the challenge of recovering from its second massive defeat.
