Football starts again in Ukraine






Well, thank god the winter break is over or so I thought until I saw that Arsenal were playing Zoria on Friday evening. As it turned out Respublikansky was re-opening and a crowd of 42,000 saw the game, which would have usually attracted about a tenth of that.

Anyway, I used the opportunity to go to Kharkiv and catch up with some old friends, and check out the new stadium as well as a spot of tourism in what will be one of the venues for 2014.


The journey there wasn't great we paid for first class tickets, but second class looked better. The first class compartment was tiny and for 6 people and came accompanied with a TV showing DVDs of ex-Soviet films everyone had seen a hundred times before. Therefore we went to 2nd class and indulged in a light refreshment or 6 before arriving in Kharkiv at 1230 where we were met by football journalist, Tolya Hamaev.


After a couple of beers and a trip round the town, which took in the biggest square in Europe a monument to the ex-leaders of the USSR and a football monument signed by Oleh Blokhin we made our way to the stadium.


The atmosphere at the stadium was more like a Britsish one than you can find in Kyiv and the redevelopment of the stadium should be complete in time for May's cup final and will be a good venue for 2014. One problem though is the pitch. The groundshare with FK Kharkiv along with winter and saturday's downpour made it look worse than a lot of park pitches.


The first half was interesting enough with Metalist dominating for long periods without really looking like scoring. They did score 2 goals but needed the help of 2 penalties given away by poor defending. Devic converting them both on 24 and 44 minutes.
The second half was more of the same with Metalist also dominating the whole game and Zhilo looking like scoring Fomin made sure of the result on 77 minutes.
After the game we were joined by Vasya for a meal at Tolya's house after wrestling to get on the tram. We drank plenty of vodka and beer before heading to the station for some brandy, needless to say we slept well on the way back to Kyiv.

Comments

Neil said…
More photos of the trip are available at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=30540&id=572820107
PS. I forgot to menion the only downside being waiting for the Villa result to come in, bloody cheating Arsenal
March 4, 2008 at 11:40 AM
Neil said…
Wrong link, this one's for the public
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=30540&l=6a1a5&id=572820107
March 4, 2008 at 1:23 PM
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