Lucescu lauds superb Shakhtar

Mircea Lucescu watched his FC Shakhtar Donetsk side clinch a UEFA Cup place with a 5-0 defeat of FC Basel 1893, the club's biggest Eureopan win, and heaped praise upon his entire team with a special mention for Willian, who scored a spectacular goal to share the limelight with hat-trick hero Jadson. Basel will finish bottom of UEFA Champions League Group C and coach Christian Gross admitted his team were well beaten but says his young players have learned from their experience in the competition.

Mircea Lucescu, Shakhtar coach
As I said at yesterday's press conference, if my players were able stick to the plan we would win the game. I want to thank my team as they kept their concentration for the whole match except, perhaps, the last ten minutes. We kept up the tempo and quickly changed the direction of our attacks which puzzled the big and slightly slow Basel players. I'm very pleased with the way we handled their pressing game, and our finishing in front of goal. Usually I never compliment individuals but now I can't help but highlight the performance of Willian. He was very good, as was Jadson. The inexperienced [Mykola] Ischenko hardly committed an error, [Olexandr] Kucher marked [Eren] Derdiyok very well, while [Yevgen] Seleznov must have played his best 45 minutes this season. In fact I have to list every player as they all looked great. Now our goal is to produce some good football against Barcelona on Matchday 6. This game is very important for me as I want to prove that our home defeat was not right.

Christian Gross, Basel coach
We tried to play compact football and until the 50th minute we succeeded, even though we conceded in the 32nd. After the second goal we had to go and try our luck in attack so we opened up and conceded three more. I have to admit that my players had great difficulties in combining in the Shakhtar half, not to mention that we lost the majority of tackles. But nevertheless, we are happy to have played in the group stage. The UEFA Champions League is the strongest competition in the world and participating in it has been very useful experience for our young players. We'll work hard on our mistakes and will now focus on the domestic scene.