Shakhtar Donetsk, the Ukranian club with the Brazilian flavour lifted the last UEFA cup held before it becomes the Europa League, by defeating Werder Bremen 2-1 after extra time.
If Pizarro was looking to send a message to Chelsea about what they were missing, Werder Bremen loan striker saw his dreams of impressing by lifting the UEFA Cup dashed by a Ukrainian victory. He did get the ball in the net twice, and was twice ruled offside - making it a staggering 30 times he's had goals cancelled for being offside, this seson.
His first would have made him a 90th-minute hero - the second would probably have sent the match to a penalty shootout.
Bremen thought the latter was softly denied for pushing in the box, but it would have been undeserving to deny Shakhtar victory. Their Brazilian quintet of Fernandinho, Ilsinho, Jadson, Willian and Luiz Adriano all impressed.
Luiz Adriano made up for an early miss by opening the scoring in the 25th minute, dinking over onrushing keeper Tom Wiese after being put through by Willian.
Naldo, Bremen's sole Brazilian in the suspended absence of brilliant playmaker Diego, levelled 10 minutes later with a 30-yard free-kick that keeper Andriy Pyatov embarrassingly helped in.
Shakhtar won it six minutes into extra time when Jadson, the man of the match, shot low past Wiese from 12 yards after Darijo Srna had found his team-mate unmarked.
The Ukraine team's Brazilians have not always been hits and often struggle to adapt to freezing Ukraine. Manchester City midfielder Elano once said the only thing worth seeing in industrial Donetsk was the training ground. Now they have a trophy to show off, too.
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Published Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 01:18:12