Search: ' Rubin Kazan'

Visiting teams complain about the pitch, but the Luzhniki Stadium deals with the Russian weather, writes Sasha Goryunov

In May 2008, Chelsea and Manchester United contested the Champions League final at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow. There was something unusual about the playing surface: it was grass. For one match only, turf was brought in from Slovakia. In fact, this was the second set of imported grass. The original failed to take root and had to be replaced just two weeks before the game. John Terry might wish they hadn’t bothered.

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Paraguay fared well at the Copa América and the World Cup, but as Simeon Tegel tells us, their style of play has frustrated many fans

Is the glass half-full or half-empty? That is the question dogging Paraguay’s national team after achieving two of their best ever tournament results, in the Copa América and World Cup, while barely winning a match. The Guaraníes, nicknamed after the indigenous group that still lives in swathes of the country, finished runners-up in August’s South American championship and made it to the last eight in South Africa, a first for the sparsely populated nation in a World Cup.

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Saul Pope looks at a rising challenge to the traditional elite of Russian football, with plenty of money and some famous faces

Since its creation in 1992 Moscow sides have largely dominated the Russian top flight,  winning 14 of 19 league titles and taking the lion’s share of second and third places. Lately, this stranglehold has been broken somewhat by Zenit St Petersburg and Rubin Kazan. However, this season two teams from the North Caucasus – the scene of wars and insurgency for much of the last two decades – aim to upstage them all.

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Saul Pope explains the monetary chaos, calendar change and political factors affecting the Russian Premier League

The new Russian Premier League season will be different, but not in a way many fans hope. With the gulf between the big boys and the rest growing ever wider, the league is getting more predictable – the top places will go to Zenit St Petersburg, CSKA Moscow, Rubin Kazan and Spartak Moscow. The difference is in the length – 2011-12 is to be a transition season of 18 months’ duration, with the season that follows swapping from the current spring-autumn calendar to, like much of Europe, an autumn-spring calendar.

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Russia has surprise new champions, from the Islamic region of Tatarstan. James Appell reports on Rubin Kazan's year of glory

When the Russian championship entered its mid-season break in May after 11 rounds, the unheralded Rubin Kazan sat atop the table. Rubin had taken many by surprise by winning their first seven matches, but few gave them any chance of remaining at the top once the season resumed in late July. In addition, during the break Rubin were rocked by the arrest of sporting director Rustem Saymanov, in connection with a triple murder committed in 1996. Then, straight after the restart, Rubin had five successive draws. The tide seemed to be turning.

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