The Parvenus of Pridnestrovia

[Uilleam 5,959]

aka Transdniestria; or Transnistria, as you will know it better. 

 

Everything you wanted to know about FC Sheriff of Tiraspol, and most things you didn't, the most important and relevant fact being that it is in the CL Group Stage, and we urny.

 

From The Guardian, today:

 

A visit to FC Sheriff: Champions League upstarts from an unrecognised land

Soviet sounds, unanswered questions and local pride emerge from trip to Moldovan club from Russia-backed Transnistria

by Nick Ames in Tiraspol

Sat 18 Sep 2021 08.00 BST

 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/sep/18/fc-sheriff-champions-league-transnistria-moldova

 

The strains of one anthem give way to a hybrid version of another. A meaningful show of applause for the Champions League music is dying down when, as FC Sheriff Tiraspol prepare for kick-off, the ultras in sector 13 erupt into verse. They do it before every game but rarely in numbers like these, nor in comparable volume: the lyrics have been tweaked but the melody is unmistakably that of the old Soviet national song, nowadays used by Russia. The choir then segue into their adaptation of another rousing tune from the USSR era, the “Moscow in May” army march. Moscow is 700 miles and two borders away but in the capital of Transnistria, whose biggest bookshop offers framed posters of the local president Vadim Krasnoselsky alongside images of Vladimir Putin and Joseph Stalin for about £1 each, no such flourishes feel out of place.

 

 

Somewhere, presumably in a secure part of the stadium, although clarity is fittingly absent, Viktor Gushan can allow himself to bask. “Europa League? My friends are laughing at me!” the secretive Sheriff president would once complain to club employees, even though a series of shots at the continent’s second competition seemed well above par for a team nominally representing the tiny Moldovan league. They routinely win that at a canter and are playing tonight because, in May, they were champions for the 19th time since the beginning of the century. With varying degrees of near-miss, the big time had been beyond them on the previous 18 attempts.

 

The oligarch set will need a new in-joke now. Gushan’s face-saving exercise accelerates 16 minutes from the start when Adama Traoré, the Malian winger, puts Sheriff ahead against Shakhtar Donetsk with a dazzling volley. By the evening’s end they have won 2-0 and sit atop their first Champions League group, pipping Real Madrid and Internazionale. The hosts’ besuited manager, Yury Vernydub, started a celebratory knee-slide at full time before wisely pulling out halfway through; his young, diverse team have linked arms and run giddily towards their public. It is their triumph: the question is who, in this thin stretch of territory that has been self-declaredly independent from Moldova since 1991, shares in it.

 

A monument to Vladimir Lenin in Tiraspol’s main square. Photograph: AP

 

The answer is simple for fans like Rodion, who was five when Sheriff were founded in 1997. “I thought I’d be an old man with a beard, taking his grandson along, before this happened,” he says. Below the collar of his shirt he wears a pin badge of the Transnistria flag: a horizontal green stripe between two thicker chunks of red. Larger versions display a hammer and sickle in the top-left corner. Nobody inside the United Nations recognises the flag: Transnistria, known locally as Pridnestrovia, may essentially self-govern but, according to international law, it remains part of Moldova. A vote among almost 400,000 citizens in 2006 came out overwhelmingly in favour of independence and a possible future integration into Russia but was not taken seriously abroad.

“The way for me is to be an independent nation,” Rodion says. “But I don’t need any referendums, any international recognition. I can personally identify myself as a Pridnestrovian.” The sentiment is unmistakable in conversations across the age spectrum in Tiraspol: while there are differing views about the benefits of proximity to Moldova and its recently installed pro-western government, there is a fervour in their assertions of identity. The rise of Sheriff adds some fuel, even if attendances at league games rarely top 1,500. An unscientific survey of taxi drivers, mostly over 40, finds little interest in the club but the generation below understand the benefits of external exposure. “We are happy the world would know something about us and our team,” says Ira, in her early 20s. “Many people see FC Sheriff as our native team and they instil patriotism when they win,” says her friend Vitaly.

 

Cultural and economic ties in Transnistria point firmly towards Russia, whose influence is omnipresent. A Russian army installation is visible shortly before the road out of town reaches Sheriff’s sprawling $200m complex; in the city centre, Russia’s flag flies alongside that of Transnistria atop the parliament building and a towering monument to Lenin guards the entrance. Tiraspol feels like a mid-sized Russian provincial city, ubiquitous Soviet ephemera breeding an eerie sense of being frozen in time, but at an added remove: the local currency, the ruble, cannot be exchanged outside its borders, and western bank cards and mobile phone plans are virtually useless.

Given the inwards focus here, many in the Moldovan capital, Chisinau, wonder when they will reap any benefits from Sheriff’s achievement. “They have practically killed football in Moldova,” says Octavian Ticu, a former Moldovan sports minister and leader of its pro-Romanian Party of National Unity. Sitting in his office Ticu recalls how Gushan and Ilya Kazmaly, believed to have both been KGB officers, constructed the club as an arm of the company, Sheriff, that they founded after the collapse of the USSR. “They used football as a weapon of their business,” he says. “Then they became stronger and stronger, and it isn’t a fair competition. Every Moldovan club pays taxes here from salaries, transfers and international participation. But FC Sheriff never paid one single [Moldovan] leu to our budget. They are Moldovan only in name; there is effectively no attachment.”

 

Transnistria has long had a reputation for its conduciveness to smuggling and illegal arms trading. Sheriff has been mentioned in connection with that more than once. Last December, Moldova’s public services agency withdrew the licences of Almavis and Tabimport, two cigarette importing companies understood to have close ties to Sheriff’s holding company, amid allegations of a smuggling scheme. “Transnistria became a kind of haven for contraband,” says Ticu of the situation that took root at the loosely policed border with Ukraine from the 1990s.

Back in Tiraspol, there are more obvious ways for Sheriff to make money. The company’s motto is “Always with you!”, and that can be taken literally. Its logo, red letters inside a blue star, is everywhere: in the chain of supermarkets, two of which sit at opposite sides of Sheriff’s stadium, situated along every main road; in the petrol stations it operates; in the television channel, mobile phone network, car dealership, brewery and other branded goods it produces. Sheriff has a stronghold on Transnistria’s government through Obnovlenie (“Renewal”), the political party to which it is linked. It has a seemingly unbreakable monopoly on the state.

 

“You could even say FC Sheriff represents itself, because Pridnestrovie is Sheriff,” says Rodion, the lifelong fan. “It’s a question, whether it is good or bad. There is no competition in football, policy or anything else. But we live in a comfortable situation, a stable one, so who cares who controls it?” The biggest positive, he believes, is that the country is peaceful under its aegis. Between 1990 and 1992 an armed conflict broke out between pro-Moldova and pro-Transnistria forces; his wife’s family were among those forced to flee, ending up in the Ukrainian city Odessa and being housed for free by an elderly local until it was safe to return. The resulting ceasefire has since held: it is a frozen conflict.

 

Despite repeated requests to speak to Gushan or another senior member of Sheriff’s leadership, nobody was made available to answer questions. The club keep a tight lid on most aspects of their operation, even when it comes to those inside. Ion Jardan, a Moldova international right-back who played for Sheriff in 2017-18, rarely crossed paths with the owner. “Mr Gushan never came to our dressing room, but if he did it would mean that everything was very bad,” he says. “Someone told me that when Gushan comes in, everyone is scared and some are shaking with fear. When you look at him, you feel that he’s a very powerful and influential person. He’s a former military man. Fortunately, he did not come to us.”

Jardan, who now plays for Petrocub Hincesti, would not get a look-in at Sheriff nowadays. Two years ago the Moldova Football Association removed limits on the number of foreign players a team can field; the club had always looked to the African and South American markets but now its ranks could be filled with promising talent that, in theory, will fetch handsome profits. Only five of Vernydub’s squad are listed as Moldovan and two of them, Alexandr Belousov and the veteran reserve keeper Serghei Pasenco, were born in Transnistria.

 

There is little doubt the cap’s removal stimulated Sheriff’s push to finally reach group stage football, which they managed through an eyecatching 3-0 aggregate win over Dinamo Zagreb in the play-off round. The local football authorities feel their decision has been justified: a Champions League participant now plays under a Moldovan flag as far as Uefa and the wider world are concerned. Perhaps Sheriff are giving something back after all. “I’m really proud that one of our clubs has got this far,” says Leonid Oleinichenko, the Moldova FA president. “We hope it will have a positive impact on investment in the sport in Moldova, and on perceptions of it.”

Oleinichenko explains youth and grassroots football will benefit in the long run. There is some way to go. A few hours before their senior sides meet, Sheriff and Shakhtar play in the Uefa Youth League in front of a few hundred fans. Shakhtar win 5-0; when their fourth goal is scored from the spot a watching cashier from the nearest Sheriff supermarket, clad in the familiar blue tunic and red shirt, takes one last puff on her cigarette and returns from her lunch break. Sheriff will be reliant for some time yet on a rotation of foreigners if they are to keep their place alongside the established names.

 

For Oleinichenko, there is a more fundamental importance to the football revolution happening here. “The political situation doesn’t matter for us,” he says. “In fact, football makes people believe our country can have a common vision. We have a slogan: ‘Football is the ambassador of peace.’ It’s a work in progress and depends on the mentality of the authorities. But I hope every day that Moldova remains a single, united country. In my opinion it’s a question of time about when this conflict will be solved.”

Politicians from across the divide have attended matches together, although more to prove everyone can get along than in expectation of a geopolitical shift. “People are good, they are not aggressive to each other, but politics are shit,” as Rodion puts it.

 

For supporters of Rodion’s age there was no football before Sheriff, just as he has known no other home than a quasi-independent state called Transnistria. It is impossible to shake off the concerns around their local dominance and the source of their success but perhaps it would feel equally uneasy to begrudge a moment in the sun for locals who, through no fault of their own, exist in a space few will acknowledge.

As Sheriff and Shakhtar walk out, a banner is held aloft from sector 13: “Dreams come true.” They always do in football, for someone; in Sheriff’s case, though, the identities and motivations of those doing the dreaming pose questions one night of Champions League football can only leave hanging in the air.

 

 

[alexscottislegend 2,374]

I can forgive us losing to Lyons but it puts the Malmo result into perspective; Malmo went down 3-0 at home to Juventus. Roles reversed and at least we would have had a wad of cash to raise us up a level.

[compo 7,184]

the gunners took the honours in today's north London derby a decent match to watch. 

Wrong box an age mistake?

Edited September 26, 2021 by compo

[Uilleam 5,959]

The most surprising thing about Transdniestria is that La Sturgeon has not honoured it with a State Visit.

She hasn't even engineered a motion of support for its struggle for self determination in the Holyrood wind farm.

She's an Ayrshire wummin, so surely Moscow -if not Dreghorn itself- could be 'twinned' with Tiraspol? 

 

Anyhow, below is a match report from The Guardian, and, below that, further background on Club and Country, from The Times.

 

Last night Sheriff Tiraspol beat Real Madrid 2-1 at the Bernabeu.

 

 

‘Everything we did turned out badly’: Real Madrid reeling after Sheriff shock

Manager Carlo Ancelotti says stunning 2-1 loss was undeserved

Sheriff’s Yuriy Vernydub hits out at comments from Dirk Kuyt

Reuters and Guardian sport

Wed 29 Sep 2021 09.13 BST

 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/sep/29/everything-we-did-turned-out-badly-real-madrid-reeling-after-sheriff-tiraspol-shock-champions-league

 

Real Madrid’s coach, Carlo Ancelotti, struggled to explain how his side were beaten 2-1 at home by rank outsiders Sheriff Tiraspol in the Champions League on Tuesday after dominating every aspect of the match with the exception of the scoreline.

Meanwhile his opposite number, Yuriy Vernydub, hit out at Dirk Kuyt, who had said while working as a pundit on Dutch TV last month that “teams like Sheriff Tiraspol have nothing to do with the Champions League”.

Luxembourg international midfielder Sébastien Thill scored an outstanding late half-volley to snatch an unlikely victory at the Bernabéu for Sheriff, who had reached the Champions League group stage for the first time this season after winning four qualifying rounds.

 

Sheriff took the lead against the run of play with a header from Jasurbek Yakhshiboev before Karim Benzema equalised for the 13-times European champions with a second-half penalty. Real had 30 shots on goal and 11 on target while keeping 67% of possession and winning 13

 corners while the Moldovan side had only four attempts, scoring two of their three shots on target – including Thill’s winner – and failing to win a single corner

“Everything went well for them while everything we did turned out badly,” Ancelotti said after his side’s first defeat of the season. “More than worried we are sad. We played with intensity and commitment but lost due to the finest details. The team played well, we could have been sharper in the area but it’s difficult to explain what happened. The small details cost us the game and we should learn from that in the future. But this was a defeat we did not deserve.”

Vernydub said victory was “so emotional” and went on to reference Kuyt’s comments, made on RTL 7 last month. “We are a real team … it’s our place and we proved it,” Vernydub said. “It was a great player, Dirk Kuyt, who said there is no place in the Champions League for Sheriff. So I’m very happy to destroy his perfect world.”

Sheriff, who were founded in 1997, are top of Group D with six points, having beaten Shakhtar Donetsk 2-0 in their opening game. Their Peruvian defender Gustavo Dulanto said: “I dreamed of winning in the Bernabéu, I have always followed Madrid, they are the most successful team in the Champions League, so to beat them at home is a huge achievement.

“There’s still a long way to go and we can’t relax because there’s no logic in football, as today’s result shows. We came here with the knife between our teeth but we can only look forward to the next game.”

 

Sheriff’s captain, Frank Castañeda, added that his side had fancied their chances before kick-off: “We knew we could win here and before the game we had it in our heads that we could, and as captain I tried to motivate the team and tell them we could do it because this is football. Real Madrid is an historic team but on the pitch it’s 11 players versus 11 and we came here to get the victory and got it.”

Match-winner Thill said: “We’re so happy today. We played a really good game. The side were so brave with how we played and luckily enough I was able to score a bit of a stunner.”

 

 

 

Last night Sheriff Tiraspol beat Real Madrid 2-1 at the Bernabeu. This article, detailing their rise to prominence, first appeared on September 14, before their Champions League debut.

 

 

 

FOOTBALL

Sheriff Tiraspol: The conquerers of Real Madrid from ‘the most lawless place in Europe’

The Moldovan champions’ rise looks like a fairy tale — but Sheriff are bankrolled by an all-powerful company in a breakaway state where the Soviet Union lives on

Robert O’Connor

Tuesday September 14 2021, 5.00pm, The Times

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sheriff-tiraspol-the-champions-league-debutants-who-are-above-the-law-36wwsdtnm

 

Last night Sheriff Tiraspol beat Real Madrid 2-1 at the Bernabeu. This article, detailing their rise to prominence, first appeared on September 14, before their Champions League debut.

Visitors to Transnistria to play Sheriff Tiraspol in this season’s Champions League won’t have seen anything quite like it. In the Russian-backed separatist enclave at Moldova’s eastern border, an archaic land where the Soviet Union seems never quite to have gone away, Sheriff’s owners have dreamt of a moment like this.

When the story began, hardly anybody was watching. The first game of this European run, a 4-0 qualifying win away to the Albanian side Teuta, was played the same night England beat Denmark in the Euro 2020 semi-final at Wembley.

 

There followed victories against the champions of Armenia and Serbia, before in August they stunned Croatia’s Dinamo Zagreb, conquerors of Tottenham last season, 3-0 on aggregate to reach the group stage.

It reads like a fairytale money can’t buy: an underdog club, hailing from one of Europe’s most impoverished countries, beats the odds to book a visit from Real Madrid in the Champions League.

Except that Sheriff’s slice of history has come at an astronomical cost, bankrolled by a corporation so vast and powerful that the territory where it operates is only half-jokingly described as “the republic of Sheriff”.

“The Moldovan league is at absolute zero, except for Sheriff,” says Ivan Testemitanu, the former Moldova and Sheriff midfielder. “Why? Because they can buy anything. They can buy Ronaldo and Messi if they want. They have their own laws over there.”

Legally, the territory of Transnistria is part of Moldova. But since gaining independence from the USSR in 1991, the government in Chisinau has never been in control of this sliver of land to the east of the Dniester river, the natural border that marks the political divide.

 

Instead, Russian rubles and soldiers, nominally stationed as peacekeepers, prop up a separatist government in the capital Tiraspol. Operating as a de facto state, outside the reach and conventions of international law, has had its advantages for those who exercise power.

A lack of transparency and accountability has helped criminal elements turn Transnistria into what has been described as the most lawless place in Europe, a smugglers’ paradise where anything can be bought or sold and no paper trail is left. In the words of a diplomat who observed the state’s formation in the early 1990s, working for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe: “Whatever it is that exists there, it isn’t a subject of international law, it’s some kind of nightmarish Disneyland.”

The Sheriff company that bears the football club’s name was founded in 1993, ostensibly as a charitable organisation to support veterans of the Soviet security services. Yet these pious intentions concealed a more materialistic purpose: under the direction of a former KGB agent, Viktor Gushan, Sheriff had soon established an efficient operation as a smuggling ring, industrialising and professionalising the small-time couriers of contraband that had taken advantage of the absence of customs checks at the Transnistria-Ukraine border.

The strategic placing of Tiraspol, on the road from the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odessa up to Chisinau and onwards to western Europe, has made a perfect storm of Transnistria’s position outside of international law. In the decades that have followed, everything from alcohol and cigarettes to weapons said to be bound for the arsenals of Africa’s warlords have passed through Transnistria, much of it allegedly via the hands of Sheriff’s operatives.

Today, the Sheriff company dominates Transnistria. Beginning with the supermarket chain selling the produce brought into the republic customs-free, the corporation is now the biggest operator in banking, telecoms, the media and even politics: the political party Obnovlenie (“Renewal”), founded and controlled by Sheriff, won a landslide majority in the state’s parliamentary elections in December. With Transnistria’s president, Vadim Krasnoselsky, elected in 2016 with Sheriff’s financial support, also a close ally, the company’s grip on the republic is complete.

Sheriff branched into football slightly ahead of the trend among oligarchs, in 1996. Promoted to the Moldovan Divizia Nationala two years later, the team began hoovering up titles, 19 of them since 2000. A glistening new stadium and training complex was opened in 2002 at a cost of about $200 million, a level of investment the rest of Moldovan football can only dream of.

The club’s business model is similar to the template used by the Ukrainian giants Shakhtar Donetsk, who Sheriff will beat 2-0 in their Champions League opener. Imports from Africa and South America are recruited in the hope of bulking up their sell-on value and moving them on to teams in western Europe, leaving little to no room for homegrown players from either bank of the Dniester.

The starting XI that defeated Dinamo in the play-off featured players from Colombia, Mali, Peru, Trinidad & Tobago and Guinea, yet only one, the naturalised Brazilian Henrique Luvannor, was eligible to play for Moldova. He left Sheriff for the UAE Pro-League days later.

“Sheriff control all of football in Moldova,” says Testemitanu. “If they want to change any rules, they just call up the president of the football federation. The people in charge at Sheriff decide everything. It used to be a rule that there had to be six local players in Moldovan teams. Last year, Sheriff had it changed.”

Sheriff may be a Transnistrian club representing Moldova, but the reality is that its fortunes are linked to neither. On both banks of the Dniester, football is struggling to survive, and is in desperate need of investment that isn’t coming.

 

 

The Vladimir Lenin statue in Tiraspol. The city is a strong reminder of the Soviet past

 

Moldova’s most famous club of the Soviet era, Zimbru Chisinau, have for years teetered on the edge of ruin, while most teams in the Divizia Nationala are drowning in debt. Football in Transnistria fares little better.

“Do you know the budget of Manchester United?” asks Pavel Prokudin, the former prime minister and present head of Transnistria’s football federation. “The entire state budget for Transnistria is around $330 million. From that we have to find money for stadiums and infrastructure, but the welfare of the people is the priority, not football.” The Soviet-era Republican Stadium, opposite the city’s trashy Hotel Sofia, is a crumbling concrete wreck, proof of Prokudin’s tiny budget.

Meanwhile, “the republic of Sheriff” continues to grow its football brand. The Sheriff Stadium complex sits way out of town on Karl Liebknecht street, along the highway that leads to the military checkpoint with Moldova proper. The club’s sprawling grounds resemble a glistening modern metropolis, while the city that shares its name trails in the dust.

Today, not much remains in Tiraspol of a time before communism. A statue of the city’s founder, the Russian field marshall Alexander Suvorov, towers on horseback over the eponymous Suvorov Square in the centre, a reminder of the city’s imperial origins, while in the summer, the Dniester attracts sunbathers to its banks in their hundreds as it wends its way serenely through the city. Yet all over Tiraspol, an imprint of Soviet life remains.

Transnistria still flies the flag of the old Moldovan Soviet Republic, green and red with a conspicuous hammer and sickle glistening in one corner. Cast in stone, Lenin watches over the Supreme Soviet building on 25 Oktyabrya Prospekt, the street named to commemorate the date in 1917 when communism came to power in Russia. These anachronisms can still be found in cities across the former USSR, but what sets Tiraspol apart is its authentic Soviet austerity.

“We may be on a capitalist path nowadays, but we still feel respectful of Soviet times,” says Prokudin. “That’s why you see what you see in the streets. We respect our history and our Russian heritage.”