Search: ' Dynamo Kiev'

Dermot Corrigan on the sad fate of Drogheda, after they nearly knocked Dynamo Kiev out of the Champions League

In August, Irish champions Drogheda United came within inches of eliminating Dynamo Kiev from the Champions League. Midfielder Shane Robinson saw his injury-time cross-shot diverted on to a post by Kiev keeper Taras Lutsenko, before the ball agonisingly rolled across the goalline with no Drogheda player on hand to tap home. Minutes earlier Adam Hughes had somehow fired over an open goal from six yards. The rattled Ukrainians held out to sneak through 4-3, then hammered Spartak Moscow 8-2 on aggregate to seal their place in the group stages. Drogheda were left ruing what might have been.

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Football in Belarus hit a new low in October, with defeat to Luxembourg, but November 19 is the 25th anniversary of its finest hour: Dinamo Minsk’s sole Soviet title success. Jonathan Wilson looks back

“There were people with flowers and kisses and love,” Mikhail Vergeenko remembers. It is that, rather than anything else, that seems most to affect the former goalkeeper as he looks back on Dinamo Minsk’s title success of 25 years ago, the club’s only trophy in the Soviet era. “Nothing organised, just love.”

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Will Andriy Shevchenko’s struggles push José Mourinho out of Chelsea? James Brandon weighs up the odds

Before the start of the season, WSC 235 predicted that the arrival of Andriy Shevchenko would destabilise the equilibrium at Chelsea, be consigned to the bench and accelerate José Mourinho’s departure. What then appeared a far-fetched possibility now looks likelier with every passing day. Shevchenko’s ­inability to find a niche within Mourinho’s tactical plan, together with his perceived position as the owner’s favourite, have brought the power struggle that has been rumbling behind the scenes at Chelsea into the public domain.

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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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Arsenal fans worried that they hadn’t heard of Champions League rivals Thun shouldn’t be embarrassed. Paul Joyce explains the rise of the tiny Swiss side, with players whose annual salaries are less than many Premiership stars get in a week

Having hosted West Germany’s World Cup final victory over Hungary in 1954, the recently rebuilt Stade de Suisse Wankdorf witnessed its second “Miracle of Bern” on August 23. Nine years after gaining promotion from the semi-professional third division and a mere three years after arriving in the top flight, FC Thun 1898 became only the third Swiss side to reach the Champions League, by completing a 4-0 aggregate victory over Swedish side Malmö.

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