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Search: ' Alania Vladikavkaz'

Stories

Muddy waters

A club's sudden demise has left many fans angry, or worse, suspicious. Saul Pope sheds some light on events in Russia's capital

At this year’s New Year celebrations, FC Moscow fans toasting their side would have been looking forward to the new season. The club had finished in the top six the previous year, was in the semi-final of the Russian Cup and had a promising young manager in Montenegrin Miodrag Božović. But in early February they suddenly found themselves without a club after their main investor announced they were stopping sponsorship and removing the club from the league. This sponsor is Norilsk Nickel, the world’s biggest producer of nickel, based in Taimyr, a peninsula 6,500 kilometres from Moscow.

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Quick fixers

Saul Pope looks at the relationship between short-term solution, long-term planning and nationality in Russian football

Considering he was sacked by his club following a series of disappointing results, the warm send-off Dick Advocaat received from Zenit St Petersburg fans was unusual and pleasantly surprising. In a league where managers from outside the former USSR have struggled to make a serious impact and many have been fired within a few months, his achievements with Zenit should also not be underestimated.

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Battle grounds

The conflict with Russia placed Georgian football in the forefront of the struggle to maintain morale, as Jonathan Wilson explains

Under normal circumstances, Wales’s friendly against Georgia in August would not have been of too much concern to anyone – perhaps not even those playing in it. As Russian military support for the separatist regions of South ­Ossetia and Abkhazia continued, however, and threatened at one point to escalate into a march on Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, it became for the visitors a rallying point.

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Russian Vysshaya Liga 1992

Russia in 1992 and Spartak Moscow begin their era of dominance. By Saul Pope

The long-term significance
To a background of hyperinflation, widespread poverty and rocketing alcohol-related deaths, Russia held its first national championship for almost 80 years. That previous championship ended in controversy; Odessa were not awarded the 1913 title due to fielding too many foreigners. Now, with the country in chaos, football was hardly a priority – attendances were down almost 50 per cent on 1991. However, these were the first shaky steps towards creating what is now one of Europe’s richest leagues, the Russian Premier League, thanks largely to the vast amounts of money pumped in by those who got rich during the privatisation of former state industries, which started in 1992.

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USSR Championship, 1991

Communism may have been collapsing around them, but Russian football was healthier than ever writes Saul Pope

The long-term significance
By the time the season ground to a halt in November, football was not the first thing on most people’s minds. During August, President Gorbachev had been held under house arrest for three days as his (and Soviet) power ebbed away. A few weeks after the end of the football season, on Christmas Day, the Soviet hammer and sickle flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time and the USSR was no more. The turmoil that followed spawned a corrupt economic and social system that would soon lead to one former Soviet citizen being able to buy a leading English team and overnight become the richest man in football.

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