Soccer Against the Enemy

by Simon Kuper

  The stadium was only a quarter full, which was Stalin’s fault. When he invaded the Baltics, he moved hundred of thousands of Russian administrators to Latvia and Estonia, and today Russians make up almost half the population of both republics. Most of the Latvian players that night were Russians, and when I asked people why the stadium was empty they explained that Latvians had no desire to see Russians play, while Russians would not watch a team called Latvia. Latvians had played soccer before the war, but these days most coaches in the republic were Russians, who picked Russian players.

  A glance at the two team sheets showed which side was stronger. There were Lithuanians with Austria Vienna and Dynamo Kiev, but Latvians abroad had got no further than Ilves Tampere of Finland, and Lomza and the depressingly named Granit of Poland.

  Latvia went 1-0 up, and sustained their lead to halftime, but even by then their earlier defeat to Malta had ceased to be a mystery. After the interval Lithuania equalized, and a few minutes from time Andrius Tereskinas made it 2-1, to end Lithuania’s lean spell of over 50 years without a victory. The match was notable chiefly for the number of dives by the Lithuanians who played in Austria, and for the number of players treated for injury. Treatment of injuries, I was to find, takes up a lot of time in former Soviet soccer.

  A relieved Liubinskas told the press conference that the match had been “rude and brutal” because it was a Baltic derby, and hence “a match of principle.” A journalist then stood up and berated the gathering in Russian. Tickets had cost 30 pence each, he raged. How could they expect people to come to the stadium to pay money like that? He was plainly a Latvian Russian, and was feeling left out of this Baltic festival.

  I sidled out and found Möller-Nielsen sitting in the other room, bored and lonely. We shook hands and sat down. Then he asked “How are you?,” expecting an answer—Möller-Nielsen is a very polite man. We got talking about his passion, England and English soccer. “I like the long-ball game, he claimed. “It gets the balls in front of the goal. Soccer should not be played in midfield. English soccer has a class, a decency to it which does not exist anywhere else in the world. You know, when we won the championships Graham Taylor and Lawrie McMenemy sent me a telegram of congratulation! I am often at Manchester United and Liverpool, and I see how well organized these clubs are, how fair the fans are.”

  We talked about the Barcelona Olympics, where he felt Ghana had played “wonderful soccer.” “Tell me,” he asked, “is it negative to say, ‘Third World?’ Is it an unkind thing to say?” The problem was preying on his mind, and we considered it. “I think a Third World country, an African country, will win the World Cup soon.”

  Tallinn, Estonia. Two days later, I arrived in Tallinn for Estonia vs. Switzerland. The Swiss press corps and I were handed programs which gave the Estonian squad and the Estonian league table, and the two seemed at odds: though Flora Tallinn had finished fourth in the league, they provided almost all the players in the national squad. Only two players came from other Estonian sides. The Estonians appeared to have selected their squad on illogical principles.

  The answer to the riddle was ethnic hatred. Flora were an all-Estonian club. The Russians who live in Estonia are known as “kolonists,” and the Estonian players had demanded that no more than three should be allowed to play for the national team, and that these three should be fluent in Estonian. The manager, Uno Piir, suggested picking the best players, but was overruled. The resulting side was hardly the best that even Estonia could muster.

  One wonders what FIFA made of this: imagine if England had an official policy of not selecting black players, or Geordies. Scotland, who was in Estonia’s World Cup group, might have complained to FIFA, or even refused to play a pure Estonia, but they did no such thing.

  The Swiss team, practicing at the stadium, looked happily integrated, with German, Italian, French and English voices mingling. English? No long-lost community of Anglophones has been discovered high in the Alps, but the Swiss manager, Roy Hodgson, is a South Londoner. As we plucked plantain grass from the pitch, he told me that the Estonians played a “Russian” brand of soccer, a view which would not have pleased them. Meanwhile, Hodgson’s assistant Mike Kelly was training the two goalkeepers, the Italian Swiss Marco Pascolo and the German Swiss Stefan Lehmann: the one showing off long, dark, Latin hair and unnecessary dives, the other pale, Teutonic and restrained. I was surprised to discover the next day that the quiet man was Pascolo and the flamboyant one Lehmann.

  The match went off predictably. Switzerland scored freely, while their fans rang cowbells and exploded stink bombs, which, as one would expect of Swiss stink bombs, did not smell badly at all. At 2-0 up, the Swiss mysteriously started singing “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” The Estonian fans had only one chant—“Eesti, Eesti”—though they had painted a flag in the shape of the Union Jack, but in Estonian colors.

  The Estonians were a soft lot. If their style was “Russian,” the main thing they had in common with the great Soviet sides of the 1980s was a lack of any will to win. A Dutch journalist once called Dassaev, Belanov, Protassov, and Co. “born losers”: he meant that there was no Soviet Stuart Pearce willing to sprint 30 yards to clog an opposing striker and save a goal, no Jürgen Klinsmann who would dive the way to an undeserved victory, no Graeme Souness throttling his teammates for not trying. The Soviets played fair, and always lost when it mattered. Estonia, an infinitely worse side, were in the same mould.

  They did attack—all the time, in fact. Once they put together 15 passes without a Swiss player touching the ball, but they seemed to intend this as an exhibition only. They barely tackled, and lost 6-0. The consensus among journalists and managers was that Estonia had been naïve. Hodgson spoke approvingly of Malta, who were “realistic about their ability,” and played more defensively. It was sad to think of Estonia curbing their style so as to lose 3-0 instead of 6-0.

  One Estonian player stood out. Martin Reim, in central midfield, was only about five feet high, but played like a Baltic Carlos Valderrama. Twice he put teammates in front of the goalkeeper (and calmly watched them miss). He played, of course, for Flora Tallinn. I asked him after the match whether it was right and equitable that the three best teams in the league had no players on the national side. He was disarmingly frank: “There are so few Estonian players. Perhaps it will encourage young Estonians to play soccer? It is true that maybe there are Russian players who could do better now.”

  Later, in Moscow, I read an article in the Russian Footbolny Kurier which called Estonia “not a national team but an ethnic team.” The magazine pointed out that Luis Fernandez was of Spanish origins but had played for France; that the Belgian side included Enzo Scifo, son of an Italian, and the Brazilian Luis Oliveira; and that Peter Schmeichel’s father had emigrated from Poland to Denmark. Of course the Poles never imposed an inefficient economic system on Denmark; nor did the Brazilians establish large colonies in Belgium, but for the Russians in the Baltics that would be no consolation.

  Maybe the defeat by Switzerland would make the Estonians reconsider, Kurier sneered. And Kurier was right: for recently, scanning an Estonian lineup, I saw a host of Russian names.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE SECRET POLICE CHIEF

  ON MY FIRST NIGHT in Moscow I went to a party and came home in an ambulance. Not that there was anything wrong with me: just that Russian doctors earn about $12 a month, and for a couple of dollars will happily take you wherever you want to go at two in the morning. I sometimes wonder whether my ambulance had been heading for an emergency.

  Martin Bormann. Vladimir Shinkaryov and I were sitting in the Academy of Sciences, his place of work, and he was reading me an article from a Russian soccer magazine. The piece was an interview with Valeri Ovchinikov, coach of Lokomotiv Nizhni Novgorod, who without any prompting was telling his interviewer that he habitually bribed referees. “Do you think I am the only coach who does?” Ovchinikov asked. Shinkaryov read this in deadpan tones, and was moving on to th
e next question in the interview when I interrupted him: “Did this not cause a scandal?” “We have so many scandals in Russia nowadays,” Shinkaryov explained, “that it is very hard to get excited about any new one.”

  I could see his point. After discovering in recent years that Stalin killed millions of his own people, that each Five-Year Plan was not overfulfilled by several hundred percent, and that all Western food aid disappears and later turns up in shops, Russians find it hard to get worked up at the news that their soccer managers pay bribes. Not long before, the 18 coaches of first division clubs had been asked, “Are there arranged matches in our league?” and all 18 had replied, “Yes.” To the next question, “Does your club play in these matches?” all 18 answered, “It does not.”

  Corruption is an ancient Russian custom, but only the best informed fans knew that it went on in soccer too. To the rest the news came as a great betrayal. Shinkaryov, an anthropologist who supports Spartak Moscow, told me how happy he had been to hear that Spartak was a rare club that did not pay referees. “A fan wants to believe that when his team wins it is not because they bought the opposition.” But he admitted that he might be wrong.

  He continued reading the interview. The last question concerned Ovchinikov’s nickname. “In soccer circles you are nicknamed ‘Martin Bormann,’ said the questioner. “Is this because of your superficial physical resemblance to him?” Ovchinikov thought not: “In our country nobody has any idea of what Bormann looked like. Our resemblance is down to something else. Bormann ran Nazi Party finances, and I will not hide from you that I administer our club’s finances. I maintain honesty towards both players and directors.”

  Kukushkin. Vsevolod Kukushkin, introduced to me as “the little fat guy,” is an elderly Russian journalist who speaks perfect, American-accented English. Unlike Shinkaryov, the little fat guy is an insider, and when I asked about Bormann’s confession of bribery he shrugged. He replied that there had been a referee in the 1970s who had become famous for not taking bribes. The reason for his probity was that he was the director of a big truck company and so rich that no one could ever afford his price. Then there was the club Tavria Simeropol, who had just bribed their way to the Ukrainian championship. “Their coach,” said Kukushkin “—well, he is not really a coach, but he is a good dealer.”

  Even so, I said, surely it was not done to boast to the press about bribery? How could Bormann keep his job having done so? “We are a very special country,” answered Kukushkin, almost with pride. “High-rank officials are exposed as crooks and remain in their posts. Recently, three contracts have appeared for the sale of one player from Torpedo Moscow to Olympiakos Piraeus. One contract is for the Greek tax inspectors, one they show to the player, and the third is the real contract, but no one knows which is which. As I understand it, in a normal country these people would be prosecuted, but here they have kept their jobs.” Kukushkin had spent too many decades in Russia to get heated up about things like that: “What’s that, when there are wars here, wars there, and the economy has collapsed? Two days ago the deputy health minister was fired and now he is under investigation for bribery.” In any case, he said, many referees accept bribes from both sides and then judge the match honestly. Teams pay up simply to get fair treatment. He drew an instructive Russian comparison: “I have to give money to traffic policemen, but I don’t get anything for it. I pay a lot of bribes. How many times have you paid bribes?”

  At the time I had never paid a bribe in my life, but I did not want to seem a tenderfoot by saying so. In any case, Kukushkin would not have believed me. “In England . . .” I began. “OK, so maybe you don’t give money,” he allowed. “But you give a guy a necktie or a tiepin and say, ‘This is for you, it’s a Christmas present.’ Sometimes referees here get ‘presents.’ When the winter is coming you can present him with a fur cap. It will keep him warm, and he can say, ‘Money? I never touch money?’ ” “Referees in England . . .” I started to argue, but Kukushkin interrupted. “When I was a young man,” he said, “an older journalist told me, ‘Bad referees give penalty kicks or offsides, but good referees know how to stop an attack while it is still in midfield.’ That is the only difference. Referees? There are referees everywhere. But there is another Referee up there.” He pointed skywards, and I dropped the subject.

  Torpedo Moscow vs. Uralmash. Sixteen days before Torpedo Moscow was due to play Manchester United in the UEFA Cup, I went to watch them against Uralmash. There were only a couple of thousand fans at the ground, and the match was the laziest performance by 22 men I have ever seen. It ended in a 1-1 draw. I told Mikhail Pukshansky of the new Sport Express newspaper that Torpedo had no chance against United. He disagreed: “The players are interested in doing well against Manchester because that is important for their futures. They don’t care about the league—they want contracts in the West.” A month later, Torpedo had knocked out United.

  What struck me most about the match was how the fans laughed and laughed at the parade of blunders, as if watching a performance by virtuoso clowns. “People here are very skeptical,” Vladimir Geskin, the editor of Sport Express, told me. “That is part of the Russian mentality. It has nothing to do with being disillusioned with political systems or living under a dictatorship or whatever. We just like to laugh. Watching soccer here is more like watching the theater. You can’t compare us to Italians or Spaniards—we’re Northern people.”

  But there was another, sadder story behind the guffaws. “Why do you laugh at the players?” I asked one young man, who said he was chairman of the Torpedo supporters’ club. “The laughter is mutual,” he replied. “They are laughing at us too, because they have their dollars and cars and we don’t.” The Torpedo players were on $500 for a win; the fans earned a few rubles. Worse, at Torpedo the fans really do pay the players’ wages, because most of the supporters work at Zil, one of the club’s sponsors.

  To be fair to Torpedo, when it came to money they were in a bind. On the one hand, in the previous two years alone, they had lost 23 players to Western clubs, and so the treasury was full. On the other, they had no hope of signing anyone because all good Russian players wanted to move abroad. The result was that the club spent its money on higher wages for worse players.

  Most English supporters would recognize the Torpedo fan chairman’s sense of love betrayed. He told me that he supported all clubs in the world that played in Torpedo’s green, white and black, and started to enumerate them before I managed to stop him. Then he told me how, after one match, angry fans had started to overturn the team bus, but had desisted because the damage would have cost their club money. He was a member of the Torpedo Travel Club, and in the days of the all-Soviet league had regularly traveled three or four days to watch Torpedo play Kairat Alma Ata or Pamir Tashkent. They would leave Moscow in midwinter and emerge in Alma Ata in high summer. Now, in the new All-Russian League, one of Torpedo’s opponents was a club named Nagodka, from south-eastern Siberia, not far from Japan. The chairman had discovered that the train journey would take seven days, so the Travel Club, he told me, would “probably” go by plane.

  A fine idea, but ordinary Russians tend to regard flying as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The Torpedo Travellers were young working-class boys. I asked how on earth they could afford it. “We are also going to fly to Manchester,” he replied. So how could they afford that? “We will have to save for some time.” On average salaries of £8 a month, indeed. Apparently he meant it, for the Travellers planned to take in an English league match too, and he asked which matches were scheduled in the Manchester area for the weekend before Torpedo’s visit. It was bewildering.

  The Russian Pelé. In the Torpedo club office (dingy does not begin to describe it), there is a black-and-white photo of a man in a suit, which has been stuck in the trophy cupboard. The man is Eduard Streltsov, who was known to Russians as the “Russian Pelé.” Streltsov played for Torpedo in the 1950s, and when the authorities suggested that he join Dynamo Moscow, club of the
KGB, or CSKA Moscow, the Army club, he refused. “Streltsov is like a huge mountain, whose whole cannot be known,” explained the otherwise rather forbidding Torpedo vice president. For his sins, Streltsov was sent to Siberia and missed the 1958 World Cup. Before that World Cup, the vice president told me proudly, the world’s press had written that two teams were greatly weakened: England, who had lost several Manchester United players in the Munich air crash, and Russia, who had lost only one man, the great Streltsov. Streltsov, the vice president added by way of a punchline, was back in Moscow in time to lead Torpedo to the league title in 1960.

  Yeltsin’s team. There were two matches the next Saturday, and one I missed because it received almost no publicity. In Russia, where it is often impossible to find out the first division fixtures of the weekend, it was only natural that few people knew about the match between the Russian government and Moscow town hall, and though Boris Yeltsin coached the government, only 1,000 spectators turned up. The final score was 1-1, and plans to decide the match on penalties were abandoned when it was found that none of the players could stand. It was a match that would never have been played under Brezhnev or Stalin, and a sure sign that the Russian government was moving closer to its people.

  A Soviet disaster. Instead, I went to the Lenin Stadium to watch CSKA Moscow against Spartak Moscow.