For decades, Shakhtar Donetsk's football academy was considered one of the strongest in the country, but according to its former graduates, its history is clearly divided into two unequal eras. The turning point came in the second half of the 2000s, when foreign specialists took charge of the youth system. This was shared in an exclusive interview with Sport RBC.UA by Maksym Bilyi, a graduate of the Donetsk academy, renowned footballer, and currently a coach at Oleksandriya.
"Before and after the Dutch"
Bilyi emphasizes that before the arrival of European coaches, youth training relied on the inherited Soviet school, which by then already looked outdated. The breakthrough, according to him, was brought by two Dutchmen — Patrick van Leeuwen and Henk van Stee. "Those times can be divided into before and after the arrival of Patrick van Leeuwen and Henk van Stee at the academy — two Dutchmen. Everything before that was still based on the Soviet school. But with the arrival of the Dutch, it was a completely different level. What they did at the academy was simply out of this world," recalls the coach, who currently works at Oleksandriya.
Training with the first team as the main breakthrough
One of the key innovations introduced by the Dutch specialists was the practice of regularly involving top youngsters in training sessions with the senior squad during international breaks. For young Ukrainians whose training neighbors were stars, this was an unprecedented experience. "When the administrator called me and said I was going to the training camp with the first team, I simply couldn't believe it. At that time, the core consisted of Brazilians, and for any young Ukrainian to make the squad or at least train with them was something unreal. It was just a crazy experience," Bilyi says.
The Brazilian core as a growth accelerator
The opportunity to work side by side with players like Jadson, Fernandinho, Willian, and Luiz Adriano gave young footballers a colossal boost. According to Bilyi's estimation, a few weeks of training next to stars of such caliber provided progress comparable to a full year of playing in lower leagues. It was precisely this mechanism, he says, that turned the academy into an efficient European-level talent factory.
Van Leeuwen's return
The historical transformation recounted by Bilyi has once again come into the spotlight: it was previously reported that Patrick van Leeuwen will work at Shakhtar once more. The return of one of the architects of that training system underscores how deeply the Dutch specialists' approach has entered the DNA of the Donetsk club and how in-demand it remains more than a decade after its introduction to the academy.
