CSKA’s Love Too Much for Alania: Russian Premier League Weekend Wrap

Back to Russia with Love.

Back to Russia with Love.

The False Nine’s Russian correspondent Andy Shenk rounds up the action from Week 22 of the Russian Premier League…

With eight games to play, CSKA Moscow’s 4-0 drubbing of Alania in Vladikavkaz pulled the Army Men eight points clear of the pack in the race for the 2012/2013 Russian Premier League title. It’s been six and a half years since the club won its last domestic title and just as long of a championship drought for the Russian capital.

On Monday night in North Ossetia, the visitors made short work of Valery Gazzaev’s revamped roster. Alan Dzagoev, who originally hails from the North Caucasus republic, knocked in Vagner Love’s rebound in the 25th minute to cool off an energetic home side. He completed his brace with another goal in the second half. This was Love’s third match back since rejoining CSKA from Flamengo of Brazil, having previously played for the club between 2004 and 2011. Doumbia rounded out the scoring in extra time after comical defending by Bosnian defender Ogjnen Vranjes. Continue reading

Aleksandr Kokorin – the Next Russian Hero

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Andy Shenk previews Russia’s trip to Northern Ireland, and the rise of a prodigious young talent in their domestic game…

Aleksandr Kokorin celebrated his 22nd birthday on March 19, just four days before suiting up for a World Cup qualifier against Northern Ireland in Belfast. The Russian national team is ensconced at a golf resort outside of North London, a few kilometers from Arsenal’s training grounds, where they’ve been training since Monday.

The young Dinamo Moscow forward, who captained his club for the first time on Saturday evening during a 1-1 draw with Kuban, admitted this day was a bit different. “[My birthday’s] never come during camp…. This time I had a very strange birthday – with the national team, and in London, no less,” he told reporters after practice.

There certainly was no time to skip downtown, either, for post-workout drinks. Fabio Capello, who signed on with the Russian Football Union last July, has tightened the screws on a squad that earned its country’s ire at Euro 2012, both for their disappointing group stage exit and media reports of pampered footballers run wild in Warsaw.  Continue reading

Stadium Boom Begins in Russia

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False Nine Russian correspondent, Andy Shenk, looks at the problems facing Russian clubs in their efforts to persuade fans to come to games ahead of major improvements being made to stadiums all over the country, with one eye on the 2018 World Cup Russia hosts…

Russia is on the cusp of a football stadium boom. The new venues are sorely needed: 12 of the country’s 16 Premier League teams play in Soviet-era arenas with minimal comfort, poor lighting, and inadequate drainage on the pitch.

Continue reading

Match-Fixing and the Balance of Power in Russian Football

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As part of a series of articles on Russian football during the Winter break, False Nine Russian correspondent and debutant contributor, Andy Shenk, pores over the latest scandal in a saga of incidents that have brought match-fixing to the forefront of the squabbling authorities’s attention…

Russian football rumbles often with news of match-fixing, from the lowest to the highest levels. In 2009, Kryliya Sovetov lost 3-2 to Terek in Grozny in a Premier League encounter that reeked of corruption. Though neither team suffered any consequences, Leonid Slutsky, Kryliya manager at the time, commented several years later on the suspiciousness of the match: “I understood that the substance of that history was known at all levels – from Mutko [head of the Russian Football Union then] to the journalists. It’s just that no one’s yet to write the truth of the match in Grozny.” Continue reading

The Many Faces of Ground-Shares

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The Valley – home of Charlton Athletic since 1919, despite a short hiatus between 1985-92

Making his False Nine debut, Fergus McWalters looks at the culture of ground-sharing and its implications across the football landscape…

Last weekend, my club Charlton Athletic celebrated the 20th anniversary of ending its exile from The Valley. Charlton played against Brighton and Hove Albion in a thrilling game that ended 2-2. Other than a mutual rivalry with Crystal Palace, Charlton and Brighton both share another thing in common; in their recent history, they had to leave their respective home grounds and share with other clubs. I am too young to remember Charlton’s exile, but the fact that it’s such an important part of the club’s history meant that I’ve learned all about it ever since I started watching Charlton all the way back in 1996. Continue reading

Shakhtar Donetsk: When East Met West

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False Nine debutant, Harry Catharell-Hargreaves, charts the origins of Shakhtar Donetsk’s creation and journey that has them flourishing in the Champions League and routinely picking up the domestic honours in Ukraine…

Towards the end of the Russian Empire, vast amounts of British industrialists seized upon the unrest in the region by opening factories, mills and mines in previously hostile areas of Eastern Europe. Needing the pioneering expertise of British workers to come with them on this journey, the businessmen brought much of their workforce along. Continue reading