Shakhtar 1 Manchester Utd 1

Bo­th Shakhtar Don­etsk and Man­chester Uni­ted had emer­ged vic­tori­ous from their open­ing mat­ches in Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue Group A and the tie in Don­etsk was wide open. Da­vid Moyes´s men entered the en­counter on the back of a sur­prise 2-1 de­feat ag­ainst West Brom­wich Al­bion at Old Traf­ford, where­as Shakhtar Don­etsk had ma­naged a 2-2 draw ag­ainst loc­al rivals Metalurh Don­etsk at Metalurh Sta­dium. Man­chester Uni­ted had to make do with­out Oli­veira An­der­son, Rio Fer­dinand, Fa­bio da Silva, and Wil­fred Za­ha, but Robin van Per­sie was ready for fir­st te­am ac­tion ag­ain af­ter in­jury. In front of a 52,000 strong ca­pa­city crowd at the Don­bass Arena in Don­etsk, Man­chester Uni­ted went in­to an early 1-0 lead af­ter eight­een min­utes of ac­tion when a low cross from Bel­gian de­fender Mar­ou­ane Fel­laini ended up at the feet of Dan­ny Wel­beck who sco­red from six yards. Twenty-one min­utes in­to the sec­ond pe­riod, Moyes made a sub­sti­tu­tion when he re­placed Fel­laini wi­th Ry­an Gig­gs, which made him the new re­cord hold­er for the most ap­pear­ances in the Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue wi­th 145 out­ings. Then, wi­th as little as four­teen min­utes left on Czech ref­er­ee Pavel Kralovec´s watch, Freda Tais­on hit the equal­ising goal for the Ukrain­i­an Cham­pi­ons when the Brazili­an mid­fielder de­livered a dev­ast­at­ing ef­fort in­to the back of the net from in­side the area to make the score­board read 1-1. The flow of the con­test con­tin­ued to bounce back and forth, but no more goals ma­ter­i­al­ised, and the group sta­ge mat­ch ended wi­th one goal each. Shakhtar Don­etsk Te­am: An­drey Py­atov, To­mas Hub­schmann, Oleksandr Kuch­er, Yaroslav Rakyt­skyy, Vy­acheslas Shevchuk, Dar­ijo Srna, Douglas Costa, Fer­nando, Al­ex Teixeira, Luiz Ad­ri­ano, Tais­on. Sub­stitutes: Ant­on Kanibolot­skiy, Ilsinho, Ser­hiy Kryvt­sov, Taras Stepan­en­ko, Bern­ard, Eduardo, Fac­undo Fer­reyra. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Da­vid De Gea, Ra­fael, Chris Small­ing, Ne­manja Vid­ic, Pat­rice Ev­ra, Va­lencia, Mar­ou­ane Fel­laini, Mi­chael Car­rick, Robin van Per­sie, Tom Clev­er­ley, Dan­ny Wel­beck. Sub­stitutes: An­ders Linde­gaard, Phil Jones, Ash­ley Young, Ry­an Gig­gs, Shinji Ka­gawa, Nani, Javi­er Hernandez.

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