football rambles

As we get closer to the World Cup and the usual jingoistic crap is starting up in full force, I feel it's time to put the ignorance of Clive whatshisface off ITV and most of the media in its place. Let's get one thing straight the 'Russian' linesman who allowed England's controversial / phantom goal in the World Cup Final of 1966 was not Russian, but from Azerbaijan. His name was Tofik (or Tofig or Tofiq) Bakhramov and he's probably Azerbaijan's most famous footballing hero. Previously he had played football and then became a referee ( he also controversially disallowed a goal in the first round in 1966 when Switzerland scored against Spain) and served on the Azeri Football Federation for many years after his retirement. The national stadium in Baku is named after him as is the stadium in Ganja. I met his son when England played Azerbaijan in a World Cup Qualifier in Baku and he even let me blow the golden whistle that his father received after the World Cup

This was also from an article I originally read on design football and it's interesting to say the least. The pictures illustrate the movement of players throughout the 1966 World Cup final created by mapping archive footage. The top image shows the detail of the whole match with movements of the England team in red and West Germany in black. The middle shows Bobby Charlton's duel against Franz Beckenbauer and the bottom shows Alan Ball's movements. The artist is David Marsh. I think it's an interesting idea even though the cynic in me says it is jumping on the World Cup bandwagon. That said it is a great deal more interesting than the cast of Hollyoaks singing a football song and definitely a lot less cynical.

Fair play to Cheltenham Town for their new badge, as an Ely City regular I have taken a weird interest in teams nicknamed the Robins in the past and lamented the fact that teams like Bristol City and Charlton Athletic have lost the Robins from their badges over the years. It's quite a brave design and as Guy Douglas from the designers flb says it was the most contemporary design that they put forward. I have to say that I really like it and I also like the fact that it has the unusual format of a Robin in flight. I stumbled upon the image on the design football website, so apologies to them for ripping it off, but as I said I really like this design.

I know it's been a long time coming, but here it is finally. The end of my season review. The season started off pretty early and ironically July was one of the busiest of months in the season with a number of preseason friendllies. In fact the first match of the season for me was on 7 July when Ely took on Cambridge United in a friendly on a very wet evening in front of the largest crowd I have seen at the Unwin. The result wasn't great though as Ely lost 3-0. Other highlights of July included Villa's preseason friendly at Peterborough, which Villa won pretty easily with a team of kids and reserves and even then the writing was on the wall for a difficult season for Posh in the Championship. They went on to get through 3 managers and were easily relegated. The other bit of fun was when Ely took on Soham for the Unwin cup and the game went to penalties, unfortunately Soham won but the kids enjoyed it. The lowlight was definitely Ely going down 6-1 to Bury at the Unwin. Augu

I still haven't got round to the end of season review, as my broadband was down all week and surprise surprise BT wasted hours of my life as call centre workers read out the same instructions to me every evening. The engineer who they sent stayed for 10 minutes and didn't do anything and in the end I fixed it myself. It is still playing up a bit, but BT also conned me into thinking the problem was the hub, which it wasn't and sent me a new one on the condition I stuck with them for another year. Useless doesn't even start to describe them. Hopefully the weather will stay as it is and therefore I probably won't be writing tomorrow either.

I may as well think about writing my end of season review, as I was hoping to get to a game or two once I got back from Ukraine, but it wasn't to be. Most of the non-league had finished and there was only the lower divisions of the league left, which meant Norwich, which I wasn't keen on and had already sold out ages ago. I toyed with the idea of going to York v Oxford in the play off final on Sunday, but the 5 o'clock kick off and not being able to get a seat near Phil finally put me off. I was still living in a hope a game would come up, but I've more or less given up on the idea now. Tomorrow is the FA Cup final and I was due to go into work, but had already cancelled when it looked like Villa might be in it, but we will be watching Chelsea v Portsmouth on the box instead. On Wednesday I went down the pub with Matt to watch Fulham v Atletico and it was quite an enjoyable evening even if the result was ultimately disappointing. For the record Villa finished a predicta

Another cancelled plane led to another bonus match. I should have been grateful, but my final match in Ukraine saw Kryvbas visit Kyiv and as I have already documented in several places on this site they always do something to annoy me. Usually Kryvbas finish mid-table and their strategy for away games seems to be to kill the game and pick up a draw away every time. However, this time they were already relegated by a long way, so things seemed to have changed. In contrast Obolon were guaranteed to finish mid-table, but the game against Dynamo didn't see them have a shot on target and earlier in the week I had been to Andriy's house to see Obolon play Tavriya away, which had seen both teams play out a 0-0 draw without much enthusiasm, which was strange at least on Tavriya's part as they are going for a place in the Europa League (which unlike in England is quite a big deal). On the day of the match I met Andriy who had an awful hangover and to be honest I should have been fee

I seem to remember that the game between Ukraine under 19s and Dynamo under 19s was fairly open for periods, but all of the photos seem to show Ukraine with the upperhand and the 4-0 scoreline would also suggest otherwise.

Here are a few more pictures from the game between Ukraine Under 19s and Dynamo's young team. Both of the pictures here show Ukraine in blue on the attack

Another cancelled flight and another bonus match. This time I was on a bit of a skive though, as I had a computer on which to do the work I was missing in Cambridge on, which nicely added to the stress of being stranded. This was a real bonus though as I have always wanted to see a game at Bannikov and as it is situated 5 minutes from our flat it was too good an opportunity to miss. The Ukraine under 19s were scheduled to play Slovakia, but they had had the same problems in getting to Ukraine as we were having getting out, so a hastily arranged game against Dynamo was arranged for the day. I can't say that I have much of a clue as to what was going on, as the PA system was only pumping out the type of dreadful techno you hear at Crimean resorts and the scoreboard just had a series of random numbers on it. I was also hampered by Sean's constant questioning and fiddling with the camera. Needless to say I can't remember who took which photo and some of his are probably better

What trip to Ukraine would be complete without a couple of comedy football pictures? Here are the kids just after the Dynamo v Dnipro game close to the Golden Gate.

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

Here are the Dynamo fans unfurling a giant flag and letting off fireworks on the neighbouring buildings.

As you can see from the buildings overlooking the stadium a lot of the locals enjoy free football. There is a story that one of the flat owners rented out his balcony for the Shakhtar game for 100 Hryvnas.

The top picture shows Shevchenko limping off the pitch when we thought he had seriously injured himself. The picture below shows him completely recovered a few minutes later.

Here's the entrance to the Obolon stand in an older picture on the site there is a picture of it before it was open.

A trip to Obolon Arena, as they now call their stadium beckoned on Wednesday night and although Obolon had had a brief stay in the Premier League before, or the Vishe Liha as it was then known it was strange to see the stands full and we were sat in the main stand, which wasn't even open the last time I was in Ukraine. When Obolon were in the Vishe Liha they tended to play at Respublikansky which always made the ground seem empty. On the night of the game I met up with Andriy and some of the boys from Obolon when Obolon played in the first league at Shaslive before they had their own stadium, so the contrast was really big. Dynamo seemed to outnumber the Obolon fans by about 4 to 1 and they seemed to have 4 times as many players on the pitch too. A lot of that had to do with another glittering performance from Shevchenko. Sheva put Dynamo ahead on just 8 minutes, and not to distract from his effort it was easy to see why Obolon have been having a mini goalkeeping crisis of late and

As I was saying one of the most predictable things about Ukrainian football is the unpredicatable fixture list, so when I saw that Dynamo 2 were playing the table topping PFK Sevastapol in the first league on the 12 April at 3 o'clock I was a bit unsure that it would take place. However, a last minute check on the Internet and in 'Komanda', the daily football paper my fears were put to the back of my mind and I felt pretty pleased. Me and Sean took the arduous journey to the village of Chapaevka and got their in record time and I had a chance to see if the Slavutych beer in the bar over the road was as good as it was when I went to see the now defunct CSKA play the Sevastapol 2 years previously. The Slavutych was still good, but I have to say that the Slavutych in the much more downmarket Mister Snack on Vulitsa Bohdan Khmelnitskiy in town is better. Anyway, as kick off approached nothing much seemed to be happening at the 'stadium', which is also the training camp

Here's Andriy Shevchenko (the player in the centre of the picture further from the camera). He still has the same old magic touch although his pace has gone a bit he is still a living legend.

The club shop at Dynamo before the Dynamo v Arsenal game

On the day of the Dynamo v Arsenal game I bought some new batteries for my camera. A few year's ago fake batteries were a problem in Ukraine, so to try them out I took this picture of Yaroslav the Wise outside the Golden Gate. It was the first ever touristy type picture I had ever taken in Ukraine despite the amount of time I lived there.

Dynamo now has a nice looking new shop and the babushki who sell tickets now have computers to sort the tickets out rather than just a pair of scissors to cut them off a sheet. This game was billed as the Kyiv Derby but the crowd of 12500 and the atmosphere didn't really suggest that it was anything other than a routine game. On the pitch it was much more of a derby though and at least Arsenal didn't roll over for Dynamo and with the exception of Simonenko the players really looked up for it. It can always be a worry that when one of the other Kyiv teams play Dynamo that they just give in, but Dynamo couldn't be accused of this on this occassion. In fact Arsenal had a lot of the early play, but it was Dynamo who went ahead on 34 minutes through Vukeovich who teed himself up for a lovely shot after Shevchenko and Milevskiy had made a bit of a fool of the hapless Simonenko. So at half time it was Dynamo who led 3-1. For some reason after just 10 minutes of the second half Ars

Whenever I have a trip to Kyiv it seems to coincide with a visit from Michel Platini. He was impressed by the new stadiums that have been built in Donetsk and Dipropetrovsk, but not too pleased with the state of the stadium in Kyiv. This is the stadium where the final of Euro 2012 is supposed to be held. I know that you can't see much in these pictures, but that is the problem there isn't much to see!

A day after the Arsenal v Metalurh game I went for a walk in the park. Here are a couple of pictures of Bannikov, which at the time I didn't think I would be seeing any football at. It is also the place where Arsenal should be playing their home games.

Reva forever, it certainly feels like he has been playing for that long with stints between the posts at CSKA, Dynamo and Arsenal. Vitaliy Reva in goals just before the end of the game

Arsenal players just after Shatskhi's goal

The top picture shows Arsenal in white on the attack The bottom one shows Metalurh about to take a free kick