football rambles

 The title of this post with all the numbers in it is enough to make your head ache, but it was a match between the new incarnation of Metalist Kharkiv and one of the incarnations of Dnipro, so it was billed as a new derby between two of the ex-heavyweights of Ukrainian football.  On the day Dnipro prevailed and in the end gained promotion whereas Metalist are still plying their trade in the first league. Metalist 1925 were founded by ex-fans whereas Dnipro-1 have some really dodgy foundations and aren't that popular now they are in the Premier League. Many Dnipro fans of the old team don't see them as the rightful heirs. How things will pan out for Metalist though is anybody's guess, as there is a new team Metal who are storming the 2nd league with some inspired signings. Yaroslavkiy, the old owner of the old Metalist is also making sounds that the old Metalist name will be resurrected, although many still believe that he is the man behind Metal too. What is clear is that ...

Yet more photos from the Dynamo v Dnipro game, but I think these 2 are actually pretty good. The top photo shows a Dynamo clearance. the bottom shows a defensive header from Dnipro, although in this picture it looks a bit more like a shot

Not the best picture, but Dnipro hit the bar seconds after this picture of Sasha Shovkovskiy was taken.

I can't say that they exactly endear themselves to me, but here is a section of the crowd at the start of the second half.

Despite being booked Borovyk continues to argue about Mandzyuk's red card.

As you can see the keeper was a little bit upset about Mandzyuk's sending off. He was booked for this reaction, although the defender pictured escaped a booking

This was what I thought was a bonus game. On the Friday we should have gone home, but the volcano erupting in Iceland meant that we were stuck in Ukraine for what I thought was a couple of days. Little did I know! Anyway, there weren't any eruptions off the pitch as first place took on third place (although at the time of writing it is now 2nd and 4th place) in front of a sell out crowd at Dynamo stadium. For some reason there seems to be some sort of friendship between the Dynamo and Dnipro fans and they finished each other's songs and sang songs about how much they liked each other, something I haven't seen since I was in Italy and even there it was a fairly rare experience. On the pitch things weren't quite as friendly and most of the early play was dominated by Dnipro. However, Evhen Seleziynov, the former Shakhtar forward who spent a year on loan at Dynamo's city rivals Arsenal seems to have lost his scoring touch of late, although he remains one of my favourit...