football rambles

  .... 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 ...

If Dynamo beat Drogheda in the Champions League their next opponents will be Spartak Moscow. In the days of the Soviet Union this was the biggest match of any season. Dynamo and Spartak were the 2 most successful teams and the 2 best supported clubs. Unfortunately I won't be in Kyiv to see it, but it should be a very interesting match indeed. Spartak were founded as a meat processors' team in 1922 by Nikolai Starostin. They quickly became known as 'The People's Team' in Russia, as they weren't affiliated to a branch of the party and were seen as an alternative to CSKA (army), Dinamo (Police) and Lokomotiv (Railways). Starostin was always keen to promote the image of the team as the downtrodden and cheated, although some of his statements about match fixing against Spartak seem to be a bit exaggerated given the success the club had. He also claimed that the name Spartak came fro his reading of the book by Raffaello Giovagnoli, and he was inspired by the story of ...