to become champion. In 1999, a Shakhtar football academy was opened and now hosts football training for roughly 3,000 youth. In 2000, Andriy Vorobey was named Ukrainian Footballer of the Year by Komanda, the first Shakhtar player in independent Ukraine to do so, and became the top scorer in the 2000–01 Ukrainian Premier League. That year, Shakhtar competed in the UEFA Champions League for the first time, drawn in a group with Lazio, Arsenal and Sparta Prague. They finished third in the group, qualifying for the UEFA Cup after a 3–0 home win against Arsenal. First league triumph The club won its first ever Ukrainian Premier League title in the 2001–02 season under coach Nevio Scala, winning by a single point over Dynamo Kyiv. They were also victorious in the 2001–02 Ukrainian Cup, defeating Dynamo 3–2 after extra time in the final. Among the key players at the club at the time were captain defensive midfielder Anatoliy Tymoshchuk, striker Andriy Vorobey, midfielder Hennadiy Zubov and defender Mykhaylo Starostyak. At the end of the season, Tymoshchuk, who emerged as the club's leader on the field, was named Ukrainian Footballer of the Year by Komanda and Ukrainskiy Football. After multiple managerial changes, in 2004 the Romanian Mircea Lucescu was invited to build a team in Shakhtar. After ten days at the club, he won the 2003–04 Ukrainian Cup and after three months, for the first time in club history, the club made it to the UEFA Champions League group stage, which won him the 2004 Romania Coach of the Year title. The strategy chosen was looking for young talented players in Brazil, which was to form the base of the attack, while the defence would supplied by largely Ukrainian talent in order to adjust to rules forcing teams to have a certain number of local players on the field. The large amount of Brazilians arriving at the club earned Shakhtar the nickname "the most Brazilian club in Europe". They won their second Premier League title in the 2004–05 season, but lost to Dynamo Kyiv in the inaugural Ukrainian Super Cup tournament in 2004. They finished as runners up in the 2004–05 Ukrainian Cup, losing to Dynamo in a penalty shoot-out the final. They retained the Premier League crown in the 2005–06 season and managed to avenge the defeat to Dynamo in the previous Super Cup by defeating them on penalties to win