Shakhtar Donetsk are the interlopers of the Champions League, a club of contradictions, yet one that has found the means to defy tradition.

They are the only side from outwith Europe’s leading football countries -- England, Spain, Italy and Germany -- to reach the quarter-finals of this season’s competition, but then they are accustomed to progressing beyond old constraints.

Few clubs are shaped by such contrasts. Based in the solemnly working class, industrialised region of eastern Ukraine (Donetsk is a mining town that was once twinned with Sheffield), they are lavishly bankrolled by Rinat Akhmetov, the country’s richest man and a billionaire who Forbes rank as one of the 150th wealthiest people on the planet; the team combines the cold-eyed, unassumingly pragmatic defending of its Eastern European defenders with the flair and infectious optimism of a clutch of Brazilian attackers.

Despite being run by an oligarch used to indulging his will, Mircea Lucescu has remained as manager since 2004, a term of stability not often found when football and vast wealth collide.

In the Camp Nou tonight, Shakhtar will face the challenge of toppling the team, and some of the individuals, who have become the iconic figures of a generation in thrall to technically adept, generously imaginative, almost artistic football. Barcelona are the representation of the game’s higher ideals, but the Ukrainian side, in their own way, stand for something just as profound. It is the ability to realise ambition, to believe that one reality can be replaced, however fancifully, by another.

Donetsk is still defined by the steel and coal industries that grimly shaped its past, but there are boutiques and high-end shopping malls that tell of a different, less sombre way of life. The team, which is nicknamed The Pitmen, has also come to reflect this change, in substance, in circumstances, and even the strips -- orange jerseys and black shorts -- are said to symbolise the way light replaces dark as miners emerge from underground (or even, more recently, the club’s change from meagreness to promise).

Shakhtar owe their transformation to an act of fate: Akhmetov was the deputy to Oleksandr Bragin when the club president was killed by a bomb in 1996. Although widely thought to be indifferent to football, Akhmetov’s heart has instead become lost to the game (when his side lost to Arsenal at Highbury in 2000, he was seen sitting alone in the stand, as the stadium’s lights went out, sadly contemplating the defeat) and he spends extravagantly. Annual costs are estimated to be around £40m to £55m, while the newly-built, 51,000-seat Donbass Arena cost £245m and will host a Euro 2012 semi-final.

In return, Lucescu has ended Dinamo Kiev’s traditional domination of Ukrainian football, winning four of the last six league titles and remaining on course to add a fifth, as well as lifting the Uefa Cup in 2009. Lucescu favours attacking football, a style of play that is as flawed as it is exhilarating. He has won titles in Romania and Turkey, as well as being admired for his work in Serie A, but his teams are often characterised by sweeping attacking play that overwhelms sides at home, but is vulnerable away.

Shakhtar remain true to his vision of passing football, something intricate and single-minded, and they are unbeaten at home since 2008, but they have also been fragile on their travels in Europe (they lost to Celtic in Glasgow in 2008). Lucescu has patiently developed a team that is capable of being both devastating and shrewd, qualities that were evident as they despatched Roma in the last round of the Champions League with a 6-2 aggregate scoreline.

In Spain tonight, Shakhtar could start with seven Brazilian-born players, including Eduardo, the former Arsenal striker, and Douglas Costa, who has caught Manchester United’s eye. Luiz Adriano will lead the attack, while Jadson will seek influence as the playmaker. If Fernandinho is judged to have regained match fitness after recovering from a broken leg, he will play in midfield, while Tomas Hubschman, Darjo Srna, Dmytro Chygrynskiy and Razvan Rat will provide steeliness in defence. Yet the team is heavily reliant on its Brazilians, who have scored 14 out of 18 Champions League goals this season (although Shakhtar now provide as many players to the Ukraine squad as Dinamo Kiev).

“Some traditionalists express their frustration with this,” says Mark Rachkevych, a sportswriter with the Kyiv Post newspaper. “Jokes are made when Shakhtar wins that Brazil has won again. On the other hand, the Brazilians perform. Not many European clubs can boast to having satisfied Brazilian players on and off the field.”

Shakhtar topped a group that contained Arsenal and SC Braga, and there is a reinforcing faith that comes from being so dominant in their domestic league. Lucescu, too, is a wily thinker who will relish the prospect of trying to overcome the sweetly destructive football that has become second-nature to Barcelona.

The players are not overawed, either, with Chygrynskiy insisting that they travelled to Spain seeking victory rather than containment. Winning the Champions League remains an ambition for Akhmetov, but in some ways he has already delivered his most lasting achievement.

“Ukraine is no longer a one soccer club nation,” says Rachkevych. Grandly and formidably, Shakhtar have established a new order.