football rambles

 Well, we have had a bit of time off for international week. I always found the international breaks boring and without being able to go to lower league football due to the pandemic, it could have been worse. Fortunately, the lower divisions in Ukraine are now all streamed on YouTube, so a quality weekend was bookended with the 2 reincarnations of Metalist, my favourites and friends Metalist 1925 and FC Metal. I''ll leave the controversies for the other places on social media where I have spoken about this. It was great to see Metalist 1925 beat promotion rivals and cup winners over Ahrobiznes to really gain a foothold in the race for promotion. After a weekend of watching games in Group A such as Dinaz winning at Bukovyna and Karpaty Halych turning over a lacklustre Chaika, it was time for the much more interesting Group B where the other Kharkiv team, Metal FC took on  Dnipro Cherkasy. It was a really good game.  On Sunday afternoon with an attendance of nearly 9,000 (...

 On Sunday morning after the Metalist game we were back to the stadium, well the training complex attached to the stadium to witness Metalist Yunior (the Metalist youth team) take on FC Arena in the Kharkiv Oblast Winter Championship. Metalis ran out 2-1 winners, which compensated a little bit for the loss we had witnessed the day before.  After this we went to the Metalist 1925 Fan Cafe, which is the best sports bar on Earth! I presented them with an Ely scarf and a Villa scarf and they presented me with some raspberry vodka to drink on the overnight train back to Kyiv.

 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 ...

  Here's a real favourite of mine. I spoke at length about what happened to the original Metalist in the post for the Metalist Kharkiv scarf and here are their legitimate heirs and good friends of mine - Metalist 1925.  I went there last in March 2019 for the 'new derby' against Dnipro-1. It was billed as a new rivalry between Kharkiv and Dnipro, but whereas Metalist 1925 have reached legitimacy, most people don't consider Dnipro-1 as the heirs apparent to the old Dnipro. Unfortunately, the game finished 1-0 to Dnipro. Metalist missed out on promotion and Dniopro went up. The season after Dnipro stayed up and Metalist just missed out on promotion again. If things continue as they have started after the winter break, it looks like a trend that is likely to continue at both clubs.