Russian Football: British Eyes (3/3)

Part 1 can be found here.

Part 2 can be found here.

As for Wenger and his team’s defeat to red-clad Muscovite foes: why such commotion over losing to Russian treble-winners? The UKs population measures at around 61 million subjects: Russia has approximately 141 million pairs of feet to strap boots upon. Perhaps Wenger and Henry’s whinging results from feelings of being the wronged underdog; pitted against a heavyweight who gets away with metaphorical murder. The Army Men had won the UEFA Cup one year previously, a competition the Gunners lost a Final of during the same decade.* Yet this view is paradoxical as post-Taylor Report England see its game riding Sky Sports-piggyback – saddled with its cash, its new stadiums, its global stars, its coherent league system and its stranglehold on the latter stages of the main European competition. And ultimately, the Gunners defeat to CSKA was anomalous and failed to perturb their progress. So why yet again does a game’s summary involve slights on Russia and conspiracy nonsense?

(* FC Zenit also sampled UEFA Cup glory in 2008 – beating catenaccio-exponents Rangers in the gold-claiming process. Suffocating subtle appraisals of the manner in which Zenit won the game however was excessive coverage of trouble that permeated Manchester city centre post-match. In excess of one-hundred-thousand Rangers fans flooded the municipality, drank too much, and fought with police and locals. Alas, this made for sexier headlines than a football game won by a truly fantastic team, and once again Russian football was denied deserved fulsome coverage and praise.)

Although Sevilla’s double-winning achievements in the (now) Europa League were greeted with praise akin to that episode of Friends where Chandler’s boss slaps his backside upon completion of good jobs (Juande Ramos was even touted for the Manchester United job – a role normally only reserved for British coaches who’ve led their sides on several *good* campaigns, or adopted-Briton Jose Mourinho), CSKAs victory over Sporting CP in the Portuguese capital itself saw its bottom gain no such hand-prints. England had 3 participants in the tournament that season. Admittedly one of those was Championship side Milwall; who predictably fell at the first hurdle. But Newcastle United and Middlesbrough were both shepherded to the exit by the beaten finalists, yet no praise for the gallant overcoming of English conquerors was forthcoming.

Here is where we see British insularism at its finest. When Middlesbrough reached the final of the UEFA Cup in 2006, everyone and anyone was quite suddenly interested in the competition: achievements in it earned Steve McClaren the England job! But should no English team be involved, the paucity of coverage and interest is embarrassing. It’s a blight that perpetuates British failure – we’re so wrapped up in our own footballing culture that we don’t feel the need to bother with anyone else’s.

In fact, you could argue this is my paradox. After all, surely the health of the Russian game internally is far more important to its growth than what a few misery-guts managers and red-top ‘papers read only by morons thinks?! Superficially, it’s difficult to register seriously a league in which a match-fixing scandal happens as recently as several months ago, closure-facing clubs like Krylia Sovetov can’t pay their staff, and the likes of Spartak Moscow (who had 80 players on their books as recently as 2003) flood their squad with imports rather than seeking the riches of the young talent at their disposal. Dmitry Sychev, doing so phenomenally well at Lokomotiv Moscow nowadays, is a scathing case-in-point. Alas, as I’ve skirted upon already, today’s world is a changed one. And to continually attract the best players, and engineer (*cringe*) marketing leeway with all the power that stimulates, the so-called Home of Football is an important ally to have in one’s midst. Making friends and influencing opinion is essential – especially when you’re bidding for a World Cup Finals.

Returning to the aforementioned European Championships tournament in 2008, and as you may have heard, England failed to qualify. Subsequent televising of the event (the terrestrial networks ITV and BBC had purchased the rights long before England’s spectacular collapse) saw it yawned at, stroked with condescending clichés, and broadcast with studio pundits who all but spent their time obnoxiously checking wristwatches. The only issue of any real substance focused on did involve Russia – unfortunately, it was a will-he-won’t-he transfer saga for Andrei Arshavin, and used as a tool to highlight why the Premier League (rather than Barcelona) was the only zone for him to penetrate in order to prove his true worth. In fact, every bit of positive exposure garnered by the 16-team-battle was re-appropriated to depict the magnitude and rudimentary health of the English club game.

You see, the ‘health’ of the game is important to the British football psyche. Before the Taylor Report changed the face of the game with regards to policing, fan safety, and stadia in the early 1990s, British football was in a dark place: without wanting to generalise, it’s indisputable that racism, hooliganism and falling attendances were common. This was a microcosm of a nation’s troubles, and the reason pandemonium reigned upon the behaviour of Rangers before and after the UEFA Cup final in 2008 – A RETURN TO THE DARK OLD DAYS? et al. In order to maintain equilibrium, picking out the flaws in leagues abroad takes precedence over positive coverage.

Although a xenophobic media will often juxtapose meaningless stats with La Liga in order to reassert the Premier League at the top of the European football hierarchy (reminders that football power works in cycles; only one nation regularly gets its full quota of clubs into the Champions League knock-out rounds; Spain only has two big clubs, blah blah), the media has found ways of bestowing the brilliant Barcelona and national side with the praise they rightfully deserve – while simultaneously wedging the Premier League in on the success. For example, note the language employed by one of Britain’s best-selling tabloid newspapers in its report of the last Champions League final:

‘Manchester United discovered what it is like to lose a European Cup final as brilliant Barcelona ruled Rome. If there is any consolation in failure to become the first side to retain the trophy in the Champions League era it is that they lost to a side as fluent and brilliant to watch as they are.’

The reader is made aware in the opening line that contesting for the major European honours by British clubs is so commonplace, that ‘consolation’ is easy to embrace. Likewise, Barcelona’s genius isn’t allowed to stand on its own legs – instead, The Mirror informs its audience that the sides are still equal. With this kind of logic, it’s little wonder Russian clubs have it all to do if they’re to start deleting some of the negative connotations that punctuate their own paragraphs.

You may be wondering why I’ve chosen to focus on a nation’s media being so obsessed with their own: big deal, huh? But representations of Spain also illustrate that Anglo-centric paragraphs don’t have to dominate. The Mediterranean country’s football sides can benefit in their British sports media depiction because Spain is viewed so favourably and romantically by Brits as our holiday destination of choice. In a reciprocating manner, jerseys act as token holiday gifts, and many a Tom, Dick, and Harry roams British streets proudly emblazoned by the name of a Spanish bloke called Xavi, or an Argentinean with forefathers unable to spell the synonym for untidy. Accordingly, Russia garners less appeal in that we have no decades-built flirtations with it, no memories or places of it to call our own, no family photos with one of its landmarks part of the mise-en-scene.

Correspondingly, a lack of known Russian cuisine hampers perceptions of the nation. Italian and French food is gushed over and devoured generously, transcending the plate to portray more favourable perceptions of these nearer-neighbours. In comparison, Russian cuisine is absent from menus. Accordingly, we have no Russianness to immediately call upon in our cultural lexicon, and this is why managers such as David O’Leary resort to the moribund clichés about cold weather, and this nation’s views are smeared in suspicion. These paucities are coupled with the negative all-round coverage and presentation of Russia and its people by multiple news agencies.

The South Ossetian conflict between Russia and Georgia in 2008 for instance, led to UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband declaring that our island “stood in solidarity” with the latter. This stance was hardly unexpected given the thawing of relations between our government and Russia’s in recent years – fed by crises like tit-for-tat extradition issues (Ahmed Zakaev, Boris Berezovsky, Andrei Lugovoi), and the alleged poisoning of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko. Such tension-strewn politics were fuel to and of the fires like the Cold War, James Bond-intoxicated childhoods, reporting of wars in the Chechen Republic, and the staging debacle/extortionate ticket and general city expense prices for the Moscow Champions League final (many a news outlet campaigned to get Manchester United-Chelsea moved closer to home) that have warmed British psyches for over half a century. Such a soothing of ties and plethora of bad headlines leaves Russia soccer little scope to make a dent in the UK market and its fanbases.

In conversation with a football-knowledgeable friend recently, a lack of match action meant his contribution to the topic of the Russian game was based on two snippets that the English press revelled in reporting. The first centred on an interview given by then Zenit manager Dick Advocaat, who lamented:

“The fans are the most important thing that Zenit have. That’s why I have to ask them outright how they’ll react if we sign a dark-skinned player. Frankly, the only players who can make Zenit stronger are dark-skinned. Look at the Brazilians who play for CSKA Moscow, for example. But for us it would be impossible. If they don’t agree with me, I will not do it. I don’t want to buy a player who won’t be accepted by the fans.”

While disgusting if true, I have encountered frequent incidents of racism in my many years of attending and watching live games in the UK. Yet nothing soothes an island’s conscious more than hearing that the Other has its problems. My friend’s second snippet related to Andrei Arshavin’s penchant for giving hacks an easy headline. Statements like “women and men are different creatures”, and “the fact that we have lost against out direct rivals this season signifies that we are not very good”, see Russian football only penetrate the opinion-influencing back-pages or 24-hour-channels when the story is encased in layers of negativity or blokey-jokey tokenism. With regards to Arshavin’s propensity for a soundbite, perhaps the lack of Russian players in England doesn’t help matters either – such a small pool to focus on inevitably leads to assessments such as the attacker’s latter being mistranslated, misinterpreted, or prejudicially sold.

So while the island spirit that perpetuates quasi-jealousy of Spain emanates from its geographical beauty, climate, and current footballing dominance, images projected of Russia are steeped in suspicion, Otherness, and a fear that it too has too much cash. A lack of Russian starlets, combined with big-money-flops such as Jo (his ineptitude and price tag are regarded as reasons why the Russian league is shocking – despite Manchester City’s willingness to pay a bloated but market-competitive fee), means that one can only hope the likes of Zhirkov, Pavlyuchenko, Bilyaletdinov and Arshavin – plus names/potential movers the English press now salivate over post-3-3-draw like Akinfeev, Ansaldi and Krasic – continue to confound expectations and prejudices on the field. Akinfeev and Dzagoev are the flag-carriers of the next generation of Russian talent – never again will the world be denied an Eduard Streltsov.

There are many other signs that a shift in emphasis on understandings and focuses on the Russian game are modifying, or set to. Russia’s World Cup Finals bids for either 2018 or 2022 could be key. While a victory would undoubtedly leave the English in a sulk and its media spouting bitter-claptrap, the commencement of new stadia-building and experiences of it (commercially, shiny stadiums sell) would soon garner scrupulous attention of a globe’s eyes. Once the hacks actually got out to Moscow to cover the all-English Champions League Final clash, comfy seats and great hospitality soon cut the sniping, and it’d be a similar scenario were Russia to beat England to the Finals. Heck, if England won the World Cup in Russia (remember, England’s 1966 World Cup victory came on home soil, and this has also further instilled an insular mindset), they’d probably knight each and every Ivan! More important than that is the fact that were Russia awarded the Finals, at least two generations of kids would live for and with the legacy – the team and its league would surely rise to world-class levels in stadia fit for clubs worthy of such status. And in the eyes of the rest of the brand-loving world, successful side + shiny stadium (and general all-round polished brand) = huge, global fanbase.

There are striking parallels between the English and Russian games. For one, both have seen a great deal change of since the 1980s. The English game emerged from the ugly womb of hooliganism, while Russia clambered out of a sticky political situation. At last, its players were allowed to transfer to clubs outside of the Soviet Union, and this occured at a time when the Premier League and its clubs were combing foreign markets for players. Privatisation of clubs in Russia means that both nations boast the ability to pay above-average wages and talent-snaring transfer fees – although as the ownership of both Portsmouth and Krylia Sovetov testifies, we share a capitalist economy’s ugly side. As both Brighton & Hove Albion and Spartak Moscow can testify, plans to build progression-aiding new homes are sustained due to fans who love the club enough to keep the issues in the spotlight (you can thank John Prescott and Mayor Lushkov respectively for the delays). Although bottomless pockets of cash can often equate to a loss of identity, the vibrant personalities of fans culture in both nations ensures that character will always remain. Yet for all our media’s infatuation with Geordies, many a footy fanatic would be overwhelmed by adoration the likes of Anzhi Makhachkala have bestowed upon them. Screw Britain’s supposed and rather poxy North/South divide – territory and geography really does matter in Russia.

On the racism front, Britain and its no. 1 pastime has by no means emerged from its racist undertones (a nation subject to mass influxes of migration – fanatically stirred by a greedy tabloid newspaper-industry – as well as having an imperialist, colonising past such as ours will take centuries to fully delete all manifestations of it), but like Russia it’s showing signs of change. The Kick It Out campaign is a roaring success. While CSKA Moscow’s acquisition of in-demand Japanese superstar Keisuke Honda not only illustrates that it’ll compete and win against other nation’s big guns in the transfer market: it’s indicative of a nation willing to overlook race and ethnicity when it comes to welcoming people to its shores. The general adoration of stars like Alex, Weligton, and Peter Odemwingie confirms this, plus even Zenit, big bad racist wolf Zenit, have had several Korean players on their books. Change on this front may be slow, but Russians haven’t had the same head-start as the British into residing with and understanding vastly conflicting cultures.

Some more for the if only’s front – …. if only the 1956 Olympics game (Russia won gold in the football) were nearer to home than the host country of Australia. …. if only Russia had done better at EURO ‘96 held in England. …. And if only a Swedish team dispatched 6-0 prior to the World Cup Finals of 1958 not been allowed to coast to a 2-0 victory in that competition’s Quarter-Final stage. Although the Soviet enigma would have remained (and access to its countries and their components all but shut-off), such events could have seen more of an early embracing of the sport: a lust for it then, a nostalgia for it now. In the same way that the Hungary team of the 1950s, a fellow Soviet Union tentacle, are still to this day endowed with deity-like status.

Now I’m not naive enough to believe that a lifetime of perceptions would have been changed by a Russian win in a World Cup over half a century ago (although there began Pele’s elevation…), or can be rectified by people realising Russian fans care for their clubs. But as the Premier League remains ever more uniform (Man City making it a Big Five does not register as a revolution), a league which can boast of impressive recent results in the Champions League surely has the opportunity to gauge support from a new legion and market. Although knocking out Seville won’t have The Sun and The Guardian holding the back page, continued progress in the competition would coincide with the start of the Russian league season, thus offering soccer fans from the UK a better chance than any to investigate how a team that finished 5th in its last domestic campaign does so well in European club side’s premier tournament. Its a league based on a straight home-away, 16-team format, boasting 6 different winners in the last 14 years (with 9 different sides on the podium in that same period – the same two figures in England read 3:5, and in Scotland, 2:9), and is ranked at 6th place in terms of strength according to UEFA. Given the amount of consumption the average British sports fan already allows his or herself, the Russian game has the potential to attract fans over here should ESPN continue its broadcasting of its highest league,

Peaceful and corresponding revolution on the pitch mirrors that going on elsewhere in the world. Only recently, US/World President Barack Obama and Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev spoke of a “fresh start”. Masses of flight companies and airports now exist offering cheap flights to every far-reaching corner of the former Soviet Union. As a result, it no longer seems as odd or expensive to visit a Russian city than it would to spend a vacation on the Costa Del Sol. Even the UK’s Terrestrial TV service now offers a channel dedicated to all things Russian – Russia Today (85 on your Freeview box, folks). Given that ‘free’ TV was a service only blessing viewers with 5 channels until recently, the cultural access points to Russia are expanding at an unprecedented rate.

Equally/trivially pivotal, but at long long last – the Russian league has been recognised on one of the western world’s most influential cultural texts. Yup, the FIFA series of videogames! And even James Bond has new, non-Soviet enemies to thwart. Little by little, news snippet by news snippet, the media is beginning to thaw its heavy-handed, easy-option denigration of Russia. It’s being recognised as a political ally worth having, and more importantly, as a culture and nation worth exploring.

Correspondingly, news stories like the recent one revealing Russia was set to unveil its first stealth fighter jet – complete with technology the US can’t offer – give Russia a new cool-factor. To a generation of kids reared on Grand Theft Auto and TV show Top Gear, such wow-factors will lurk in the subconscious rather than memories of the Soviet Union and cold weather that lingered in those of our parents.  The media retains such an alarming position of power in shaping vox pop. Ours is a population in the midst of 24-hour news channels, phone internet, and driving with the radio on to PC-using desk jobs (followed by evenings in front of the TV).  As the advertisement for supermarket giant Tesco reads, every little (positive bit of media spin) helps.

Therefore, results and performances such as the one that saw CSKA hold Manchester United to a tie (at Old Trafford, with no mitigating sub-plots, snidey weather sneers, or conspiracies) are like the bold titles and introductory sheets to the metaphorical Powerpoint of change beginning to creep into British perceptions of Russia. With premium Russian beer Baltika now frequenting British pub fridges nationwide, hopefully several more Tom, Dick and Harry’s will spend 2010 in the pub watching Spartak Nalchik-Terek Grozny on ESPN, Baltika bottles in hands, ruby red Bukharov 11 shirts proudly displayed.