football rambles

 Obviously, I am a big fan of Ukrainian football and even before the trip to Kharkiv all the way back in 2008 that started the whole blog I had had 3 years at the start of the millennium following mainly Kyiv based teams, so as part of the trip to Kyiv and Kharkiv, I visited a few other meccas of football. Both of the games I saw were at the Lobanovskiy named stadium, so I also went to Olympiskiy to see the Dynamo museum. I had seen a small exhibition of odds and ends in the club shop on a previous visit, so the thought of a museum was intriguing. Unfortunately, the small exhibition in the club shop was the 'museum'. I enjoyed it, but it would be great if a club with so much history went to the bother of having a proper museum, especially as there is a massive and expensive museum just around the corner just for the Klitschko brothers. Another point to make is that nothing much is made of Start stadium and the legendary match against the Luftwaffe side. I know that Ukraine want...

 In March 2019 I went to Ukraine and managed to reacquaint myself with some of the places that I used to hang out when I started this blog. The first match that I managed to get to was a game between Olimpik Donetsk and Dynamo Kyiv. Although the match was at the stadium named after Lobonovskiy where Dynamo played their home games before the renovation of Olympyskiy this was technically a home game for the 'Donetsk team'. Like a lot of teams from the east of the country including European competitors Shakhtar Donetsk and Zorya Luhansk, they are having to play their home games out of their city as Europe's forgotten war continues to this day. As I write this, the long-term future of Olimpik looks far from certain as rumours of the team basically being shipped off to compete in Odesa under the Chornomorets name continue to raise their heads again. Anyway, back to this match, it wasn't too cold, but the match was far from exciting to tell the truth. Dynamo never looked conv...

  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!

  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.