Scarf of the day #17 Spartak Moscow

 




.... 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 feel like proper football and Spartak felt like the people's team that they professed to be. Loko tended to attract a quite pretentious set, Torpedo and Dynamo didn't have any fans really and CSKA were homeless at the time, and in those days before widespread use of the internet they could be hard to track down.

There were some controersies at the time with Spartak being the most successful team and the stories of doping with sniper drugs were prevalent and worrying, but they also had some great players, who I liked a lot. Andrei Tikhonov was a clever midfielder who liked going forward. He was accompanied by Dmitri Alenichev  - who went from Moscow to Roma at the same time as me - and Ilya Tsymbalar. It was a great midfield and the fact that both Aleinichev and Tikhonov went on to return as coaches shows they had the intelligence. Unfortunately Tsymbalar died at 44, but he also had a coaching career that took in the Spartak second team.

So a club to dislike a lot about, but they are also a team with a great history and their qualities as the anti-establishment team in the Soviet Union can't be neglected. They also had a team that I enjoyed a lot about when I lived there.

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