Showdown Looming Over Proposed Gazprom League

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Andy Shenk explores the controversies and implications of the proposed United Championship to Russian and Ukrainian football…

Gazprom chairman Aleksey Miller’s confirmation last month that a potential Russian-Ukrainian football league would feature a $1 billion prize fund, backed with a Gazprom guarantee, set the stage for a far-reaching confrontation within Russian football.

The seeds were planted months earlier, when Gazprom-owned Zenit general director Maksim Mitrofanov warned his club “might decide to not participate in the Russian championship.” His statement came after harsh sanctions were imposed on Zenit for the flare thrown at Dynamo goalie Anton Shunin during a meeting between the two clubs in mid-November.   Continue reading

Russia’s Europa Trio in Pole Position

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Andy Shenk looks at the Russian trio vying for progression to the Last 16 of the Europa League…

For Russian football fans, Rubin midfielder Pablo Orbaiz’s stoppage-time goal in Madrid was just the exclamation point to a thrilling Valentine’s Day in the Europa League. Zenit and Anzhi kicked the night off in style, celebrating 2-0 and 3-1 victories over Liverpool and Hannover 96. Several hours later, Rubin’s Spanish mercenary silenced the Estadio Vincente Calderon crowd, breaking away for his team’s second goal as Atletico goalie Sergio Asenjo tried vainly to catch him from behind.  Continue reading

Capello’s Russia Rock ‘n’ Rolling

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The False Nine’s Russian correspondent, Andy Shenk, looks at Fabio Capello’s promising start in the Russian national team hotseat after seven months in charge…

Almost eight months have passed since Russia crashed out of Euro 2012, falling 1-0 to the Greeks on June 16 in Warsaw and failing to advance from a group with Poland, Greece and the Czech Republic. Four years earlier, a nearly identical squad had reached the tournament Semi-Finals. Continue reading

The Caucasus Question in Russian Football

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Sometimes football rivalry can go further than just fans’s distaste for other clubs and their traditions. False Nine Russian correspondent, Andy Shenk, looks at the Caucasus region in Russia and how the area’s recent success in football has exacerbated further tensions between ethnic Russians and their mountainous compatriots…

For many in the United States, Russia brings to mind only cold Siberian steppes and grey old women in frumpy grey overcoats. The stereotype is as propaganda-driven as Russia’s perception of America as one big dissolute reality TV show. 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

Can Brazil make home advantage count in 2014?

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With the countdown well under way for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, Rory Macdowall assesses the host’s chances of winning the tournament on home soil…

On 16th July 1950 in Rio de Janeiro’s Maracana, Alcides Ghiggia completed a storming run to fire in a goal at the near post, securing a Uruguayan victory in that year’s World Cup. The goal was met with near silence in a primarily Brazilian crowd of 173,850, stunned into submission by one of the greatest upsets in football history. The loss burned in the hearts of the biggest footballing nation on the planet, their right to win thwarted by their tiny neighbour to the south.

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Euro 2012: The Last of Its Kind

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In the first of a series of reviews of the 2012 football calendar, editor James Dutton looks back at that thrilling June in Poland and Ukraine and a tournament likely to be fondly remembered as the last of its kind…

Viva España

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