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The final staging of the UEFA Cup turned out to be a very engaging affair won by Ukraine's Shakhtar Donetsk 2-1 over Germany's Werder Bremen in extra time Wednesday in Istanbul. Next year Europe's second-tier competition will be re-branded as the Europa League. All three goals were scored by Brazilian players, including the winner sin the 97th minute by Shakhtar's Jadson. The game was full of incident, with Shakhtar especially aggressive throughout, probing the right side of the Bremen defense through captain Croatian Darijo Srna -- who's loss cross set up the winner.
Shakhtar got the scoring starting when Luiz Adriano collected a long, low pass through the Bremen defense and chipped keeper Tim Weise from just inside the box.
Bremen didn't wait long to draw level, when Brazilian defender Naldo ripped a freekick from 25 yards, which Shakhtar keeper Andrei Pyatov couldn't handle and ended up batting into the netting.
Though neither team scored for the next hour, it was plenty entertaining with chances on both ends. It's just a shame that Werder's all-world Brazilian midfielder Diego was suspended from the game due to card accumulation.
Shakhtar -- the first and only Ukrainian club to win the competition -- broke the deadlock when Srna served in a low cross to Jadson, who skimmed it low over the grass and through the dive of a lunging Weise. Immediately after the goal the Bremen defense make appeals of a handball, but those claims appeared completely baseless.
Bremen nearly equalized from the restart, with Claudio Pizarro firing wide of the target, just a minute after Jadson's goal. The Germans thought they had a penalty in the late going when Srna hooked down Aaron Hunt inside the penalty area, but their pleas fell on deaf ears. Pizarro thought he'd leveled, too, late on but was ruled offside.
It'll be interesting to see where Shakhtar go from here. Will they follow in the footsteps of last year's UEFA Cup winner -- Zenit St. Petersburg -- which eventually sold off star Andrei Arshavin. Or will they make the next step and make a move toward the Champions League knockout rounds.
Obviously after today's game Srna will be at the top of the summer transfer lists of all major European clubs. That said, Shahktar's chairman is Rinat Akhmetov who just happens to be one of the richest men in the world. So it would have to come down to Srna forcing a transfer from the club where he wears the captain's armband.
All-and-all, it was a pretty good swansong for the NIT of European soccer.
