Palkin: I don’t like it when we have an organization like FIFA that stands above everyone

CEO of Shakhtar Sergey Palkin commented the situation with the club lawsuit against FIFA. According to him, FIFA may extend its addendum on transfers that will affect the club.

“Before FIFA introduced this Annex 7, we tried many times to contact FIFA, but there was no answer. We knocked on the door many times, but no one answered. When you read and listen to the speeches of the FIFA President, he always says that we are one football family. But just then Ukraine was not part of it. We were out of this process. How can a decision to implement Annex 7 be made without consulting, without contacting the most affected parties? They did not contact the Ukrainian management. They did not communicate with either the Ukrainian Premier League or Ukrainian clubs.”

“They just published this article and we lost half the team. We lost an investment of 40 million euros. And as far as I understand, now FIFA wants to extend this Appendix 7, and we will lose an additional 40 million euros. Therefore, we are losing confidence in what we are doing, the determination to continue investing in Ukrainian football, because there is no protection. We ourselves. We are trying to protect ourselves. Therefore, there are many questions and we need to change a lot in how FIFA should respond and what attention should be paid to Ukrainian clubs, as well as other big and small clubs.

“First of all, I will start with Mudrik, whom we sold to Chelsea. It helped us keep the club running and recover our debts because FIFA allowed our players to leave and the clubs kept demanding payment for those players. Can you imagine? Our creditors are asking us to pay. But when I argue about how you can pay if there is no way to sell these players, they just disappeared and we have a war going on, no one cares. Therefore, this money that we received from the sale of Mudrik helped us to repay these debts.”

“And finally, yes, we have filed a lawsuit against FIFA and CAS. And immediately I realized that it is impossible to win a case against FIFA and CAS, because 80% of CAS income comes from FIFA. The CAS Board, the FIFA Representative and the Head of the Collegium in our Court have been appointed by the CAS. And the head was loyal. And from the first minute you understand that you are losing this case.

“And after that we decided to apply to the European Commission. We have already sent all the documents there. And when we receive the full package of our case from CAS, we will go directly to the Swiss Federal Court. That’s why I don’t like it when we have an organization like FIFA that stands above everyone. We need to show the whole world that we need to be protected somehow. Yes, now we are fighting on our own, but a week ago we started holding meetings with the ECA. They became intermediaries between FIFA and Ukrainian clubs. We had two meetings.”

“I believe that ECA will help us find a solution. We are in the process. And a week ago we invited ECA President Nasser to come to Ukraine, meet with Ukrainian clubs, discuss our problems. Why be in an association? To help each other. If you have a problem, everyone should support you.”

Earlier, the Pitmen appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport against FIFA’s actions. The miner demanded to cancel the decision, and also planned to oblige the International Football Federation to pay damages in the amount of 50 million euros.

CAS dismissed the appeal and determined that FIFA did not violate the law in its decision regarding the Ukrainian club. In addition to the European Commission, Shakhtar intends to file a complaint with the Swiss Federal Court.

Soon, the Donetsk club filed a complaint with the European Union Commission against FIFA regarding the current rule allowing foreign players of Ukrainian clubs to unilaterally suspend contracts.