Russian Football - Russian Games,

Russian Players

An Englishman who has lived in Moscow for over a decade, speaks the language and is an avowed fan of Russian football, Bennetts has produced an engrossing, authoritative account of the game in his adopted country as it makes a growing mark in Europe. Yet he does not shy away from the endemic corruption, racism and hooliganism, including a hair-raising account of how one team manager hired gun-toting thugs to attack five of his own players, whom he suspected of taking bribes to throw games. More Russian roulette than the beautiful game at times, it seems.

(By Simon Redfern Indipendent.co.uk)

Football Dynamo , by Marc Bennetts will fill you up with all the knowledge you need. In the process you will find that you discover as much about the country as the game. Fans with flares at a recent derby in MoscowRussian flare play: fans at a recent derby in Moscow

Take, for example, a popular chant from the grandstands: "Sudyu na milo!", which the author initially translates as "Referee on soap!" Bewildering. Put the referee in a soap opera? Make him slip over? Bury him in suds?

Eventually, Bennetts discovers that the phrase should properly be translated as: "Make soap out of the ref!", a reference to the Soviet-era practice of manufacturing bathroom products out of the rendered fat of stray dogs.

That conveys some idea of the cultural gulf to be spanned. Back when soap was made of dogs, football in the USSR was played by military or local state-sponsored teams, stadiums were crumbling concrete edifices and fans - if any could be found - were often let in free after half-time.

But the game - like the nation - has been revitalised by oil money and the burgeoning post-Yeltsin economy. Now, oligarchs and vast industrial combines have football clubs as playthings, and foreign stars - though none, as yet, from England - are lured by fabulous salaries.advertisement

However, the shadows of the past linger. Match-fixing is rife at all levels, and accepted with a kind of grim and depressing stoicism by players and fans. "If they started to battle against corruption, like the Italians, I don't know what would happen. Something awful, that's for sure."

A disgruntled fan? An exasperated campaigner for fair play? No, Vladimir Beschastnykh, an ex-Spartak Moscow forward and one of his country's most-capped players.

Hooliganism seems to be as prevalent as corruption, and in one of the book's most intriguing passages, Bennetts reveals that many of the early perpetrators of organised violence model themselves not on skinheads but on hippies.

The heirs of the 'long hairs', though, lack for nothing in savagery. Their boots boast "sharpened razor blades" - as if the original articles were not dangerous enough - and their disregard for their British counterparts is total. Glasgow Rangers, for example, some of whose supporters were responsible for a recent ruck in Manchester, are thought of by Russian hoolies as "snivelling cowards".

The author has lived in Russia for many years and is fluent in the language, so he can conduct all of his interviews in the local lingo. But more importantly, he also has the courage and the insight to pursue his topic on to distinctly dangerous territory, and the result is one of the best books about football in a foreign land you will ever come across.

(By Andrew Baker Telegraph.co.uk)

Book review:

5.0 out of 5 stars Otlichno! (Excellent), 11 May 2008

By Kharms (London, England) -

I'd been looking forward to this book for a while after reading about it on the Virgin website, and it was worth the wait. With Chelsea and Man Utd about to battle it out in Moscow, and Zenit to take on Rangers in Manchester in the UEFA Cup final, the book couldn't have come at a better time. Aside from being extremely topical, it is also very well written , and Bennetts gets right to the heart of not only the Russian game, but Russia itself. Including excellent accounts of Terek Grozny's (from Chechnya) victory in the Russian FA Cup to England's defeat in Moscow last year to Guus Hiddink's transformation of Russian national football, the book, via politics, literature, and a host of fascinating interviews with oligarchs, hooligans and players and more, really does "decode Russia through football."Great Simon Kuper (Football against the Enemy)foreword as as well, and he even mentions my all-time favourite Russian writer by way of describing Dynamo Moscow's misfortunes! (see nickname)Recommended for anyone interested in Russia (even if you are not a big football fan)