The CIS League: Political Football in the Soviet Union

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Think Russia has given up on all to do with the USSR? Think again. False Nine Russian correspondent, Andy Shenk, assesses the aims and implications of a proposed CIS league gaining popular support from leading Russian clubs and courting controversy with the RFS, most of Ukraine and a certain Sepp Blatter…

FIFA President Sepp Blatter dealt potential breakaway Russian clubs and their plans for a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) football league a harsh blow on January 20: “FIFA is not interested at all in this competition… Competitions between them [clubs] take place within the framework and under the control of the national associations, within the borders of their country and association. That is the fundamental principle.” 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