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...

 It's a good one today. The mighty CSKA Kyiv. CSKA were my favourite team in Kyiv, as you will have gathered on other posts on the blog. When I first went to Kyiv they were probably at their highest position, challenging in Europe and enjoying famous victories over Jokerit Helsinki (who now only exist as a Russian owned ice hockey club) and more impressively Red Star Belgrade.  Disaster was around the corner, after we witnessed them 'throw' a game against Dynamo at CSKA stadium on a day where Shakhtar also appeared to win by foul means against their neighbours Metalurh, the writing was on the wall. The mayor of Kyiv in the winter of 2001 wanted a team, and CSKA with its army heritage just wouldn't do, so he took their licence and replaced them in the Premier (then Vische) Liha with Arsenal Kyiv. CSKA more or less took on the role of a second team and despite there supposedly being this link between Arsenal and CSKA it never transpired.  The CSKA stadium was left derelic...