Scandals
This year’s scandals related to Russian football could easily fill several seasons. 2011 was a year of aggressive confrontations between Moscow and St.-Petersburg football fans on one side and supporters of Caucasian FCs on the other. Some of the nationalist radicals even tried to organize boycotts of games with North Caucasian teams. Nationalists also insulted the teams, their supporters and players on various occasions and even threw bananas at Roberto Carlos, who currently plays for the Dagestani team ‘Anzhi’. The famous Russian football player Yuri Zhirkov, who chose to play for the Caucasian football club, also had to endure the humiliation of football fans booing him at each game. Junior teams had a fight in Vladikavkaz – the public knew about it only thanks to Internet, another instance in which Spartak football player Gogniyev was beaten up by the police in Grozny.
The Montenegran footballer Nicola Nikezicha was also beaten up, as he claims, on the orders of his club’s administrators, who wanted him to break off the contract.
Fans of Petersburg’s FC Zenit almost wrecked their team’s game with the Cypriot team FC APOEL, and one of the most popular football reviewers, Dmitry Guberniyev, allowed himself to insult one of the Russian national team members, Vyacheslav Malofeyev, on air on one of the federal channels.
There are a lot of other examples, but the most striking thing is that Russia’s Football League didn’t take any real action in any of these cases.
Victories
However, Russian football fans can’t complain that luck deserted their favourite clubs this year. For the first time in the history of Russian football, two teams managed to get into the Champion’s League play-off – Zenit and CSKA. It seems that Zenit had a great deal of luck in winning this position.
The results of the European Cup-2012 draw were also very fortunate for Russian teams – all other teams in Group A(the national teams of Greece, Poland and the Czech Republic) are of the same level. Nevertheless, football critics still say that the Russian team will need some luck to beat its opponents.
Injuries
One of the most discussed football injuries of the year was of one of the CSKA players, Igor Akinfeyev, after his clash with Spartak player Wellington. The incident was rough but not extreme, but it was not the first time that the Brazilian player had caused an injury and failed to apologize. For their part, CSKA fans threatened to deal with Wellington in their own way.
To be continued
By Guia Saralidze, exclusively to VK
