Kicking on: Russian football recovers from the post-Soviet doldrums

Russia won the ice hockey world championships and Eurovision in May. Now the national side is seen as a dark horse at Euro 2008

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By Matti Rämö
     
      When the Soviet Union imploded on itself, Russian football went down with it.
      During the Soviet era, the big clubs in the USSR were generally subordinated to some government body or industrial complex.
      CSKA Moscow, seven times the Soviet Champions, were the “Army Men”, with a military background as the Central Sports Club of the Red Army.
      Zenit Leningrad had links with a local metals plant, Lokomotiv Moscow were owned by the Soviet Ministry of Transportation through the Russian Railways, and Moscow Torpedo used to belong to the ZIL auto factory.
      Dynamo Moscow, with 11 Soviet Championships and six Cup titles, were affiliated in the old days with the MVD (the Ministry of Internal Affairs).
     
Among the fans in those days, the strongest popular sympathy was with Moscow Spartak, just about the only side not to be bound hand and foot to the political structures of the Soviet Union.
      Spartak were also a very good side, and they were the only ones to stay above water when the decline of the Communist command economy deep-sixed the traditional league and cup winners.
      Between 1992 and 2000, Spartak missed out only once on the rather devalued Russian Premier League title.
     
The Premier League’s downward spiral in the years after the fall of Communism was reflected in the Russian national side’s performances in major tournaments.
      In 1988, the Soviet Union were runners-up in the European Championships, losing in the final to The Netherlands.
      In the 1990s and into the present decade, the CIS and Russian sides either did not qualify for the World Cup or European Championship finals or sank without trace if they did.
      But in the Euro 2008 tournament that got under way in Switzerland and Austria at the weekend, the Russians have some reason to hope for more from their team.
     
A number of experts and pundits have predicted that the young Russian squad could spring a few surprises, even though they only squeaked into the finals at the expense of the hapless England team.
      We were also served notice of the resurgence of Russian club football in May, when Zenit St. Petersburg (the former Zenit Leningrad, now lavishly funded by Gazprom) beat Glasgow Rangers 2-0 in Manchester to take the UEFA Cup.
     
The steady rise in the quality of football coming out of Russia has also been noticed by Alexei Eremenko Sr. , now 44, who moved to Finland and league side Pietarsaari Jaro from Moscow Dynamo back in 1990.
      “The standard of the Premier League game there is going up by leaps and bounds. These days it does not fall that much short of the English Premiership, where you get better foreign players than in Russia.”
      Eremenko Sr., who hung up his boots with Jaro in 2005, keeps an active eye on goings-on in the Russian domestic leagues.
     
From his home in Pietarsaari he can watch on satellite all the games from the Russian Premier League and First Division.
      Last season he reckons he watched around 60 Russian league matches.
      He has also made the trip to Moscow in person a couple of times to watch his son Aleksei Eremenko Jr. turning out for FC Saturn, based in a suburb of the capital.
      There is seldom any difficulty getting tickets for Saturn home games.
      “The only times the 18,000-seat Saturn stadium gets filled up is for local derbies”, says Eremenko Sr.
     
But even if Russian league attendances do not match the huge crowds drawn by the top sides in England, Spain, or Germany, the finances of the Russian clubs are on a much more solid platform these days than they were in the immediate post-Soviet era in the 1990s.
      Nearly all the 16 clubs in the Premier League have foreign players on their rosters, and they also have the means to be able to hang on to their own homegrown talent.
      This is reflected in the make-up of the national squad: of the 23 players at Euro 2008, only one - midfielder Ivan Saenko of FC Nuremberg - does not play at home.
      This is the strongest “domestic” ratio of all sixteen teams represented at the finals in Austria and Switzerland.
     
“Russian players have no incentive to head off to middle-ranking European clubs in search of better wages. And as yet there is no real demand for them among the rich superclubs of Spain or Italy or England”, says Eremenko Sr.
      The former player, who was in midfield for Moscow clubs CSKA, Spartak, and Dynamo in the late 1980s, was among the first Russians to transfer to the professional leagues in Europe.
      “In February 1990, we were on a training camp in Spain, and I got a surprise offer to stay and play in the country. After talking it over with the family, I moved a month later to join Real Sporting de Gijón in La Liga."
     
Having warmed the Gijón substitutes’ bench for several weeks, Eremenko tired of Spain and returned to Moscow, where he took up an offer from the small Pietarsaari club.
      “A businessman from Pietarsaari had been on a trip to Moscow and had asked around for potential players to come to join the squad. I was recommended, since I was on the transfer list.”
      Eremenko played for Jaro for nine seasons in two separate stints, helping to lift the small west coast club up to be a force to be reckoned with in the Finnish League.
      And he also settled there, and after his playing career, which included 360 League games and 64 goals, he set up a gym in the town.
      In 2002 he became a naturalised Finnish citizen.
     
For the Finns, the resurgence in Russian football is not without its drawbacks.
      The two countries will meet twice in the upcoming World Cup qualifiers, with the first fixture being a trip to Moscow in October.
      Eremenko is naturally diplomatic and forecasts good times ahead for both sides. As well he might, since his sons Aleksei Jr. and Roman Eremenko are in the national squad.
      Aleksei Jr. has 35 caps and has scored 12 goals, while Roman (currently signed to Udinese in Italy) made his début in a Finnish shirt in 2007 and now has nine caps to his name.
     
“I believe that the Finnish side’s game will start to smoothen out in the autumn. Stuart Baxter has not yet had much time in charge to get the team to play the way he wants.”
      Baxter took over as head coach from Roy Hodgson at the beginning of this year. Under Hodgson, Finland came close to securing a place in the Euro 2008 finals, but not close enough.
     
Eremenko Sr. believes that Russia will progress from their group at Euro 2008, where they have to face Spain, Greece, and Sweden.
      “The Spanish sides of the past have been full of big names, but they have yet to perform to their full ability in big tournaments. Sweden and Greece [the surprise European Champions in Portugal four years ago] also have good sides, but I can’t see either of them as a firm favourite to go through from the group to the knock-out stages.”
     
Much will depend on the opening fixture, against Spain on Tuesday.
      But if footballing success comes at Euro 2008, by the end of this month few in Russia will remember May’s ice hockey world championship gold medals or Dima Bilan’s victory at the Eurovision Song Contest.
      “No, they’ll be forgotten in a flash. Football has always been the number one sport in Russia.”
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 8.6.2008
     
     
Translator's Note, 18.6.2008: Aleksei Eremenko Sr. got it right. After a dismal start against fancied Spain, who delivered a 4-1 drubbing to the Russians, they recovered to beat Greece 1-0 and then secured their passage to the quarter-finals with a convincing 2-0 victory against Sweden. Goals from Roman Pavlyuchenko and man of the match Andrei Arshavin (suspended for the first two games) were enough to see off an ageing Swedish side and set up an interesting tussle against The Netherlands, who won their "group of death" with ease. The Dutch coach of the Russian team Guus Hiddink, himself a former coach of the Dutch national squad, will nevertheless need to coax an even better performance from his players if they are to overcome the Orange team, who have stamped themselves as potential European Champions.


Links:
  UEFA: Euro 2008

Helsingin Sanomat