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Russian Football: British Eyes (Part 2/3)
by Martyn Fisher
Routine victories also come resplendent with slants or slights. When UK
media darlings Fulham beat Amkar Perm 3-1 in this season's Europa League,
the focus lingered on Dmitry Belorukov's injuring of Andy Johnson. Despite
Hodgson effusively praising Perm after their 1-0 victory in the return
leg ("Amkar played particularly well today and made life difficult
for us throughout the 90 minutes"), games between the sides will
only be recalled in the English football fan's memory for a foul and Fulham
progression. The mined controversy of the former shifts more papers than
praising the style of a team from East Russia.
Other victories noting the neat football played by a Russian side - such
as Everton beating FC Zenit 1-0 in the 2007-08 UEFA Cup (the BBC match
report notes the away side's 'considerable style of play') - came complete
with the paranoid chest-beating of a Scottish manager. In the words of
David Moyes: "We deserved to win. We had most of the best players
on the pitch and that against the Russian champions who had plenty of
players in the Russia side that beat England recently". Decorum,
Dave?
Rather alarmingly (for him), Bolton Wanderers manager Sam Allardyce graciously
accepted that his side had been outplayed by Russian opponents in a November
2005 UEFA Cup game. Singling out goalkeeper Jaaskelainen (and appeasing
EPL Chief Executive Richard Scudamore to boot by using 'Premiership' as
a substitute for 'world'), the rotund headset-wearer pontificated: "Jussi
is playing at the top end of his game. He is one of the top two or three
goalkeepers in the Premiership and has proved that again". The final
score in that supposedly one-sided encounter? Trotters 1, FC Zenit 0.
Once more, a polished performance is forever buried under the rubble of
English ruthlessness.
Celtic eliminated Spartak Moscow in the qualifying rounds of the 2007-08
Champions League after the lottery of a penalty shootout. Nevertheless,
manager - and apparent astrologer - Gordon Strachan had been confident
all along: "I felt we would win. I felt it was our time". Just
for good measure, the abrasive Scot was quick to boast that his 'keeper,
Artur Boruc, was "without doubt the best in the world". Try
telling Big Sam that! Alas, with such a foe standing between them and
progression (compounded with the game taking place at the Luzhniki - a
ground the fans tend to avoid, and one no team, particularly Spartak,
wants to call home), Celtic's opponents were seemingly destined for heartache
from the moment the draw was made. Yet in truth, the Green-and-Whites
were a poor team, indebted to a net-tender in the midst of a few months'
respectable form, and again, a handy Russian squad was left by the wayside
to stew.
A similar fate befell Dinamo Moscow two years later as Celtic epitomised
squeezing through. The Hoops overturned a single-goal deficit from the
first leg to prevail to the next round of the Champions League with a
2-0 victory. Playing to type, English manager Tony Mowbray overlooked
being tactically outclassed in the Parkhead match, brazenly spouting that,
"over the two 90 minutes I think the better team came through".
No conspiracies or sub-plots bog down any of these games, yet regardless
of this British footballing dogsbodies feel the need to point out that
they got one over on the Russians. The candles of suspicion and tension
always burn where teams from the other side of Europe are concerned.
City rivals Rangers have met their fair share of Russian opponents in
the last two decades. During the 1992-93 edition of the Champions League
(when only the group winners advanced; two groups of 4 doubling up as
a quarter-cum-semi-final), an admirably strong Scottish outfit occupied
a pool with eventual winners Marseille, Club Bruges, and CSKA Moscow.
Despite sharing a no-score-draw on Matchday Six (the pair were staring
elimination in the face anyway), Rangers hit one goal without reply in
the Russian capital on Matchday Two.
Several years later, Valery Gazzaev-led Alania Vladikavkaz were dispensed
with by virtue of a 10-3 aggregate win, but controversy surrounds the
Glasgow side's next match-up with a Russian side. The UEFA Cup was the
stage this time, and its First Round saw Ipswich Town make headway versus
a Konstantin Zyryanov and Igor Semshov-staffed Torpedo Moscow (the BBC
match report sneeringly makes reference to the 'deserted stadium', and
in spite of the Suffolk side boasting talents like Finidi George and Premiership
top scorer Marcus Stewart, refers to the triumph's supposed 'stun' value).
Rangers meanwhile had been paired with Dagestani side Anzhi Makhachkala.
Based approximately one-hundred-miles from a war-torn Chechnya, the Ibrox
club's chairman David Murray crossed his arms having tossed all toys out
of the pram, steadfastly refusing to countenance the Govan mob making
the trip. Now obviously, Murray's worry had absolutely nothing to do with
the fact that the game posed Rangers problems in a footballing context.
Obviously. As reported by Kevin O'Flynn in When Saturday Comes:
"Hundreds of thousands of people tried to get tickets for what would
have been the first leg at Makhachkala's Dynamo stadium. It is seen as
one of the hardest away games in the Russian league, but more because
of the small ground and passionate fans than for any life-threatening
reasons. Security is always tight - and there have never been any problems
- and if Rangers had come they would have a large armed police escort
at all times."
Russia's football union president, Vyacheslav Koloskov had personally
guaranteed UEFA that Rangers would be well looked after in Dagestan, and
the local government gave UEFA written security guarantees and unveiled
plans to deploy 2,500 police and special security forces. Nevertheless,
UEFA bowed to pressure exerted by the British side, Russia was again transmitted
via farce and gloominess, and in the ensuing Warsaw-based crowd-free,
atmosphere-shy one-legged match, a Rangers side paying the likes of ?12m
man Tore Andre Flo, World Cup silver-medallist Claudio Caniggia, and recent-Manchester
United Russian wing-wonder Andrei Kanchelskis scraped through with Bert
Konterman striking late. The following round saw them dispatch Dinamo
Moscow thanks to 3-1 and 4-1 wins.
The 1-1 draw the Glaswegian duo's stable-mates, Aberdeen, shared with
Lokomotiv Moscow during the 2007-08 UEFA Cup Group stage may not have
been a victory, but such was the underdog story attached to their presence
in the competition that it was depicted as one. The SPL had every right
to feel inferior to Russian sides given the Parovozy's almost for-the-sake-of-it
transfer acquisition of Garry O'Connor from Hibernian. Dons manager Jimmy
Calderwood was quick to reach for his best David soundbites during an
interview prior to this clash with Goliath:
"I've watched the tapes of Lokomotiv and they are a typical Russian
team: strong, well- organised and dangerous on the counter-attack. Their
side is peppered with quality. Chelsea are after two of their players,
while they recently bought a striker for ?5m. We can't live with those
kind of things. Nowadays, even Rangers and Celtic can't live with that
and they are in a bigger league than us."
This ham-fisted, cliche-ridden envy not only sought to heap pressure on
the visitors, but added that pseudo-total mistrust complex ensuring Aberdeen's
point was received in the British consciousness as another sign of our
pre-eminence over Russian(/European) sides - them moneyed-boys can't even
beat our pub-team paupers, ha! Bizarrely, Calderwood felt under-nourished
by the scoreline:
"If you are beaten by a much better team, you can accept it, but
this feels like a defeat. They are a good team and can play the ball about
for fun, but they were not causing us many problems until we gave away
the goal just before the break".
In the same competition, Version 08-09, a second-string but home-advantaged
Tottenham Hotspur side rallied from two-goals down to hold Spartak Moscow
- thus sealing the North London's side journey to the next round at the
expense of the visitors. Perhaps talk of Spartak's character-filled showing,
or of the two goals scored by the prodigious Artem Dzjuba dominated Harry
Redknapp's post-match interview then? Nah. Much more important was a needlessly
hullabaloo-soaked focus on the decision to haul off Gilberto ("He
was quite happy to come off. There's not a way back for him here. The
boy doesn't want to play"), followed by a bitter, typically insular
match diagnosis: "We gave two bad goals away, we played that badly.
It gave them a lift and they suddenly looked dangerous".
Such is the disregard held for a competition screened by ITV (Britain's
second biggest television network) on their fourth channel, that decent
British-Russian matches are long forgotten. The attitude of "Yeah,
you can play it on the deck and all that, but we won and didn't even care
if we did or not" permeates. And albeit subtly, such scores in Europe's
secondary competition do bolster blinkered perceptions of English football's
supremacy.
You may wonder why I'm choosing to look at results so closely. To many,
stats are an irritant, and fail to truly reflect surrounding context or
actual happenings in the match itself. Nevertheless, football is a game.
Opponent vs opponent, and vitally, players, fans and even governments
want wins. Accordingly, final scores are not only vital building blocks
or platforms to hop to-and-from for my argument, but crucially, they provide
evidences . And seeing as the majority of neutrals will not watch every
game ever, opinions tend to form solely from scorelines. Hence their importance,
and the corresponding reportage of them, is on a level that rises above
superficiality.
So what of the clashes with outcomes swinging the way of Northern Eurasian
sides? In the 1995-96 Champions League, the press-pack were unanimous
in declaring Blackburn Rovers's fortune after a supposedly favoursome
draw. Phil Shaw encapsulates the self-assurance:
"Yesterday's draw for the Champions' League was as kind to Alan Shearer
and Co as it was harsh on Rangers. Blackburn, whose first foreign foray
was curtailed by the Swedish part- timers a year ago, avoided the big
guns of Italy, Spain or the Netherlands and instead face Spartak Moscow,
Legia Warsaw and the Norwegian champions, Rosenborg Trondheim, in their
six-match mini-league."
Rovers finished bottom, losing both home and away to the Russian champions
- who went on to top the group. If only manager Oleg Romantsev wasn't
so fixated on his develop-and-sell policy (he sold Viktor Onopko, Stanislav
Cherchesov, Serhiy Yuran and Vasily Kulkov prior to their quarter-final
match-up with Nantes), perhaps the English press could have gushed over
their representatives being dismissed by the gallant competition victors.
Instead, Spartak's tame and avoidable exit merely increased the wealth
of column inches shaking their collective heads at the Lancashire side's
immediate fall from grace. When they weren't busy crowing over Mike Newell's
record-quick scoring of a hat-trick (in a dud game against Rosenborg),
that is.
It's doubtful anyone bar the staunchest of Manchester United fans recalls
their team's UEFA Cup exit at the hands of "unfashionable" Torpedo
Moscow in September 1992. The Independent's Derek Hodgson was initially
wholehearted in his praise for the Russian side (despite concurrently
underscoring his own nation's cornering of the game's wealth):
"[Torpedo] may be young and short of experience at this level but
this team from the Zis car factory proved to be capable, disciplined,
quick and well organised. Tactically they matched some of the world's
best-paid professionals over the 120 minutes of this tie creating the
better chances, if not quite as many as United."
Unfortunately, the journalist can't quite bring himself to end the assessment
in anything but an Anglo-centric light. He bequeaths Alex Ferguson, United's
Scottish underling, some sagacious advice: "Where United's management
must be looking, in the inquest, is at the tactical thinking employed
in the first leg at Old Trafford." Another Red Devils failure in
the same contest came three years later, dished out this time by Rotor
Volgograd. You'd think that losing to an outfit outside the nation's monopolising
capital city would provoke several turned heads, but victory for the side
from a region of Russia that geographically spoons Kazakhstan is largely
forgotten in terms of achievement. Another Hodgson writing for The Independent,
Guy - nepotism, anyone? - was keen to stress that United were denied a
clear penalty from an Alex Shmarko handball. Yet tediously, the game is
only ever recalled in the media or pub due to Peter Schmeichel netting
a (redundant) late leveller at Old Trafford.
Staying with the Manchester outfit, and one is presented with the example
of FC Zenit thwarting Manchester United 2-1 in the 2008 European Super
Cup. Regrettably, this litmus paper was merely if-we-gotta glanced at
by the British press: who then seized on an excuse to pick at Paul Scholes's
accumulation of daft red-cards - the faux-pas in this match saw him attempt
to play an overhit cross as a volleyball shot.
Aston Villa (lost a UEFA Cup tie 2-0 to CSKA Moscow after resting key
players; Martin O'Neill offered to take the 295 travelling fans out to
dinner; that token gesture and a semi-controversial decision was dwelt
on rather the game by the media), Leeds United ('The Leeds chairman, Peter
Ridsdale, denied claims in a Russian newspaper that his side had offered
Spartak money to switch the [UEFA Cup] third round, first leg match from
Russia to England. He also said Leeds might protest to Europe's governing
body. "It just seems the latest in what would appear to be a sort
of psychological warfare timed to undermine us," Ridsdale said. The
first leg in Moscow was called off last week because of a frozen pitch
and was rescheduled for Thursday in the Bulgarian capital Sofia.' So stirred
The Independent after Leeds had been beaten 2-1 at a neutral venue), Wales
(lost a European Championships second-leg play-off at home to Russia;
blamed unused sub Egor Titov's failed drug sample in the 0-0 draw of a
first-leg; tried to engineer entry to the tournament at the expense of
their worthy conquerors), and England (lost a crucial European Championships
qualifier 2-1 in Moscow; plastic pitch furore; press collectively lambasted
Wayne Rooney for giving away a dot-shot; also slaughtered Steven Gerrard
for missing a nigh-on open-goal) in 2009, 1999, 2003, and 2007 respectively,
have also let defeats get subsumed by external factors in order to hide
their being outclassed. Particularly, the media made a habit of masking
the flaws of their English *superstars* during that doomed qualification
campaign. For instance, the blame was attributed to a divot and Paul Robinson
after Croatia outdid them in Zagreb.
Arsenal have also leapt aboard the conditions bandwagon. After a 4-1 hammering
at the hands of a declining Krasno-belye in a November 2000 Champions
League group match, The Daily Telegraph's Christopher Davies metaphorically
cuddled Wenger's men by highlighting that it was "the coldest day
of the year in Moscow". Diddums. When the Gunners lost to CSKA Moscow
in Champions League 05-06, the pitch was apportioned the blame (compounded
with a dubious disallowed goal that left normally-calm Thierry Henry seething,
"It was a clean and clear goal. I just hope what goes around comes
around"). An under-pressure Arsene Wenger ignored being outplayed
in order to back his striker's claims ("now we have something new
- they cancel goals because they saw things which did not exist"),
and appealed to the sport's governing body in a post-match interview:
"Uefa has to look into [it] because it is not acceptable that you
play on pitches like that in the Champions League". Sour grapes,
anyone?
Russian
Football Now, January 29th, 2010
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