football rambles

  Well, despite having the weekend off this project and wearing a few of the ones that we have already had featured here, today we have another good one. Obolon Kyiv. This is an old school Obolon scarf that features Latin on one side and Cyrillic on the other. Also notice the controversial spelling of 'Kiev' on the one side of the scarf. this came from the end of 2002 and that was less of a bone of contention then.  My dad has the original one of these scarves, I got that one with Phil when we first met Andriy Tatarchuk. It was at a time when Obolon's first team were playing at Olympiskiy before the 'Remont' and eventual move to their own stadium. The mighty Obolon 2 were playing at the old ground in Smena at that time.  Nowadays, Obolon have their own Arena, which is often used for first league meetings and as a home for several displaced teams in the Ukrainian Premier League. I'll probably try and get to a game there next time I'm over, but last time I was

 Here's a scarf that is a bit rammy in every sense of the year and to be honest as it is 35 years old it doesn't look too bad. It's a scarf from Derby's centenary year of 1985. The season was 1984-1985, which is what it said on the shirt that they had at the time. The yellow, blue and brown on the scarf that also appeared on the shirt was a nod to their original colours. It wasn't a great season though, as although manager Arthur Cox was to lead them to successive promotions, they finished a disappointing 7th in the old Division 3 at the Baseball Swamp. Bobby Davison helped himself to 26 goals. They also had Kevin Wilson and Andy Garner as forwards so they definitely not short of firepower. Local lad Steve Sutton would become a well-known keeper and Gary Ablett would go on to play for Liverpool. There was also the experience of Kenny Burns and John Robertson, who had tasted European glory with deadly rivals, Nottingham Forest. They probably should have done better r

Today we have Arsenal Kyiv. Although, I'd probably think of CSKA as my Kyiv team and had some great days out at Obolon and glory nights with Dynamo, Arsenal seemed to be a team who were more of a constant. When CSKA had their place taken by Arsenal, a lot of people said that they were not going to support Arsenal, but carry on with CSKA. That was all well and good, but with most of the first league teams playing on Fridays or weird times in midweek, it was never going to be a pragmatic decision. I gave Arsenal a chance and met a lot of their fans, who seemed to want something other than the mainstream appeal and dodgy politics of Dynamo. Most of them I would consider my best friends now - even almost 20 years later. As for the scarf that was made especially for the ultras in 2004-2005. They were made in a factory in Zaporizhzhia, which makes them more authentic. I am also grateful that they got them here, as at one time they were wanting me to get a job load of Rangers scarves that

 Another Korea scarf and one that probably saw a few games at the Seoul World Cup Stadium. I think that I wore the one that featured previously more regularly for FC Seoul games as it was more red and black than red and blue - like this one, which was the one I tended to wear for the national team. Going back to the issues with merchandise at stadiums, I think that I actually bought this from a shop of random things in Itaewon, probably in late 2005 or early 2006. The colours are more like the real deal on this one, although the red yin to the blue yang is a bit lost on a red background.

 It's been a long time since I have been to a Buxton game, but they were the first non-league team that I took an interest in. This scarf must be from the 1980s. As a kid I really enjoyed visiting the old club shop with its array of random souvenirs from other clubs and programmes from across the league. I remember getting a Barrow pennant there and for some reason the programmes from other clubs that most stick in my mind are from Wales - Bangor and Colwyn Bay. I also met Neil Warnock there and got his autograph, when he was manager of Burton Albion. That was when he was still a chiropodist rather than Colin. Strange to think that Warnock was managing Burton Albion in the Northern Premier League, considering what both he, individually and the club of Burton have done since. Buxton however are still in the Northern Premier League (which is a level below what it was then) and have also spent some time in the Northern Counties East.

  I could probably done with a warmer scarf today, but it serves me right for missing yesterday! Today we have a South Korea scarf, which I believe I bought at a 3-1 home defeat to Ghana which was actually after  the team had played in the World cup in Germany. As you can see there is also a badge on the scarf which is an FC Seoul  badge that the Ultras gave us. At the time Korea was one of those countries that the Premier League was clamouring to sell merch to, but oddly the K League seemed pretty poor at doing it for their own clubs. It might have been that FC Seoul were a fairly new club having taken the place of Anyang Cheetahs a couple of years ago, but I also went to a few away games and in general merchandise seemed to be a few scarves, t-shirts, badges and knock-off replicas, which as Man United were so keen on selling shirts seems a bit odd. Anyway, I had some great days out in the K League and at the national team games.

  Another day and yet another Villa scarf (that's 3 out of 18). This one is from some time between 2000 and 2007, as the badge illustrates. I can't remember where or when I got it. Hopefully, it will bring some luck in the game against Brighton today.

  .... and a day after Dynamo Kyiv, we have their all time arch enemies Spartak Moscow. Now, here is a scarf that I would definitely not be showing to any friends and family in Ukraine in a hurry! The part of the scarf says 'Only Russia and Spartak'. The ends say ' Do you love Spartak? I do!' and 'I love Spartak Moscow'. I wouldn't describe my relationship with Spartak as one of love. They are associated as being 'very Russian' in the minds of many Ukrainians and I actually threw a Spartak shirt away during the initial invasion of the Crimea. There was also the ice hockey department and the controversial behaviour of the fans that rightly angered Medvescak and rightly so.  I lived in Moscow between 1995 and 1998 though and to be honest although it was sometimes a bit hairy as a foreigner in the Spartak end (one game against CSKA being particularly hair raising, where the military joined in with the CSKA hools on the Spartak hardcore) it did at least

  Well here is a scarf of a team that this blog is no stranger to. This scarf is from a game against Tavriya back in 2013 that is covered in this blog. I had a season ticket for Dynamo from 2000-2003 and went to most games from 2007-2008. In between this blog going quiet and resurfacing, I had a trip to Kyiv where one of the matches that I went to was between Dynamo and Olympik Donetsk. Although the 'Donetsk' team were at home the game was played at Dynamo stadium, as a home game would have been at Olympiskiy. The atmosphere was good, but the game wasn't great. Dynamo took the lead through a Tsyhankov penalty on 13 minutes; Oleksiy Gai equalised from the spot to even things out and Nazryn Rusyn scored what was to be the winner on 39 minutes. As is often the case with Dynamo, not a lot happened in the second half!

  Following on from Lazio and my year in Rome yesterday, I spent the season that followed on the island of Sardinia. My local team and the team that I really followed were Sassari Torres. However, it was always good to have a trip to Cagliari now and again and a trip to the Sant' elia was always part of those trips. The trip wasn't that talented and the president, Massimo Cellino was universally disliked and they were ultimately relegated from Serie A. Patrick Mboma up front was probably one of the highlights.  That said, it was when the whole of the stadium was looking good having been revamped 10 years earlier for the World Cup and you did get to see some of the stars of Serie A. The first game I saw there was a 0-3 defeat against Udinese. Unfortunately, one of their rare wins during the period was a 1-0 victory over Roma with an Mboma winner, which I was also present at. The best game was probably a 3-2 defeat to a star studded Parma that included a young Buffon in goals. A

 I am not a Lazio fan at all and in fact Roma are my Italian team. When I lived in Rome, I supported Roma but went to both Lazio and Roma games. My Roma scarf got thrown away in the scarf purge years ago, but this one has been sitting in a drawer for years and has seen the light of day for the first time in ages. There are a lot of reason s why I don't like Lazio as a club, but when I lived there in the 1998/99 season they did have a fantastic team.They finished 2nd in the league, but won the last ever European Cup Winners Cup at Villa Park and Super Cup.  They finished 2nd to Milan on the last day of the season, but beat Juventus on the last day the year after. Sven Goran Erikson was the manager and there was a glittering array of talent in the squad. Lombardo and Mancini will be well known to Premier League fans and Nesta, Nedved and Vieri will be known to most fans, but Marcelo Salas who won the Capocannoniere, Almeyda and De La Pena were also top class. The team were a joy to w

  This is another one of those warm weather scarves, it comes from my first trip to a foreign football ground when I went to the opening game of the  1994 to 1995 season at the Vincente Calderon stadium - a long time before they went to the Wanda Metropolitan.  It was a decent game, but didn't go the way that Atleti would have wanted it to with Valencia claiming a 4-2 victory. Mijatovic helped himself to a hat-trick and in the video below you can see why it is sometimes important to try and stay on your feet! The other Valencia goal came from Salenko and Pirri and Caminero scored for Atleti.

  This was a present from  a game that I wasn't at, but as far as half and half scarves go, it's pretty decent. I quite like the way both badges are included and that on one side there is the Latin version and on the other the Cyrillic one - although to be honest I used to think it looked really weird when they used to sell them on Kreshchatyk. This one was from the Dynamo store at Olympiskiy. The game itself ended in a draw with Jeremain Lens scoring first for Dynamo with Khouma Babacar scoring for Fiorentina in stoppage time. The Viola won the second leg 2-0 in Florence though with Mario Gomez and Juan Manuel Vargas scoring the goals after Lens had gone from hero to zero by getting himself sent off. Fiorentina themselves lost in the semi-final to Sevilla, who went on to win the tournament beating another Ukrainian team, Dnipro.

  Another Villa scarf makes an appearance today with the anniversary of 25 years of the European Cup win against Bayern Munich came out of the draw. As you can see it features both the 1982 version of the badge and the 2007 one.  The scarf was given away at the last home game of the season, which was a 3-0 win over Sheffield United. I wasn't at the game though, but my dad got the scarf. On the same weekend I saw FC Seoul draw 0-0 at Daejon Citizen.

  I am sure that this was originally something that my dad found in a junk shop a few years ago and obviously thought that I didn't have enough Villa scarves, an assumption that I think will come under scrutiny during this exercise.  However, as it is a plain bar scarf, I am going to dedicate it to Thetford Town. I have always enjoyed going to Thetford and since they opened the new bar almost exactly 3 years ago at an unfortunate 4-1 home defeat in the Vase to Wisbech there are even more reasons to go. I had planned to go there recently, but like all other plans the pandemic put a bit of an end to that.

 When I first moved here, I imagined that I would be going to Cambridge United a lot more, but something about the club has never resonated with me, so a lot of the visits after the first couple of seasons have been as parts of groups where it has been organised by the local junior club. For my football league fix in the local area, I have tended to favour Peterborough United. If things had worked out differently this year, I might have been tempted to go more regularly to the Abbey, as the last time I went, I really enjoyed it. It wasn't a brilliant game, but it was on December 29 last year and Cambridge won 1-0 against Morecambe with a single goal from Jack Roles deciding the match on 57 minutes.

 It's a good one today. The mighty CSKA Kyiv. CSKA were my favourite team in Kyiv, as you will have gathered on other posts on the blog. When I first went to Kyiv they were probably at their highest position, challenging in Europe and enjoying famous victories over Jokerit Helsinki (who now only exist as a Russian owned ice hockey club) and more impressively Red Star Belgrade.  Disaster was around the corner, after we witnessed them 'throw' a game against Dynamo at CSKA stadium on a day where Shakhtar also appeared to win by foul means against their neighbours Metalurh, the writing was on the wall. The mayor of Kyiv in the winter of 2001 wanted a team, and CSKA with its army heritage just wouldn't do, so he took their licence and replaced them in the Premier (then Vische) Liha with Arsenal Kyiv. CSKA more or less took on the role of a second team and despite there supposedly being this link between Arsenal and CSKA it never transpired.  The CSKA stadium was left derelic

 Today's scarf of the day is the original design Ely City one. This is quite an old scarf and is a bit better than the ones that have followed it, given the extra colours and detail on the robin. I did have a newer one that has a badge that's red and white and looks more like the official badge, but that now resides in the Metalist 1925 cafe in Kharkiv. Ely have also got a newer design, but it seems shorter and the lettering (I think) is inexplicably in black. Above is the scarf that's now in Kharkiv with the lads in kharkiv.