“Saturday was a historic day for Torcida Sandžak, Serbia’s only Islamic ultras group. They’d witnessed their team, Novi Pazar, go a goal down in the opening fifteen minutes, miss a penalty and concede a second in first half stoppage time. All of that came in one of the biggest games of the season, the home fixture with Partizan Belgrade; last season’s champions who had won their opening two matches 4-0 and 6-0. Novi Pazar, by contrast, had lost their opening game at home to newly promoted Javor Ivanjica. And yet somehow they emerged victorious, recording their first ever win over Partizan.” backpagefootball

“Anti-racism campaigner Piara Powar has attacked Russian football’s record on racsim after it emerged that a winner of the official Russian Premier League annual beauty pageant had posted neo-Nazi messages on social media. The latest racism story to emerge from the 2018 World Cup hosts comes days Emmanuel Frimpong was sent off for gesturing towards abusive Spartak Moscow fans. The Russian Football Union later ruled there was no evidence to prove that Frimpong had been targeted by racists and the player’s two-match ban for being sent off was upheld.” World Soccer

The soccer world continues to condone Russia’s racism
“With all the outrage surrounding the 2022 Qatar World Cup, it’s easy to forget that, in just three years, Russia will be hosting the 2018 World Cup. Yes, the same Russia where players regularly get racially abused at Russian Premier League games for sport. That should be comforting to players and fans, particularly those who may be of a similar hue to those who get abused on a weekly basis. I mean, welcome to Russia 2018, amirite? Save up for your bananas. Zenit St. Petersburg’s Brazilian striker Hulk said yesterday that he faces racial abuse in ‘almost every game’ in the Russian league. That’s a hell of a statement and, to be fair, a remarkable level of consistency and dedication from Russian fans.” Fusion

Red Star and the land of great knights
“As an English football fan, I’m surprisingly comfortable with the notion of congregating into the symbolic centre of a town far away from where I live and belting out messy, off-key renditions of self-written songs. Those obnoxious little ditties glorifying my own roots at the expense of others are usually characterised by puerile language and an awkward cocktail of self-deprecating humour mixed with the most ridiculously aggrandising boasting.” Football Pink

“Way back in the mists of time that was 1986, it was possible for an Eastern European team to become kings of the continent. Everyone remembers the great Red Star Belgrade team of 1991, of course, but five years before that, in 1986, the Ros-Albastrii ( the Red & Blues) of Bucharest became the first club from the East to claim the ultimate prize in European club football.” backpagefootball

“Cold War Europe was a sinister place. Behind the Iron Curtain, popular opinion told us, it was a grey, totalitarian world where spies drank thick black coffee in cafes, children informed on their parents, smoke-chugging cars rolled off production lines and food queues, for inedible black bread, went on for miles The lingua franca was strictly Russian. As for football, teams were supposedly mysterious, functional, militaristic and tough. They were known as ‘Crack’ Hungarians, Bulgarians and East Germans. But while these teams were hard to beat, it was the latin contingent in Europe that emerged as the dominant forces, notably the Spanish and Italians. In 1962, the trend was broken when one Josef Masopust, a 31-year-old Czech, was named European Footballer of the Year.” Football Pink

“With the vital Russia v Austria Euro 2016 qualifier lost in disappointing circumstances, the Russian season eased to a finish with pretty much everyone and everything where we expected them. The Russian Football Union (RFS) hasn’t the money to pay off their expensive Italian (a crowdfunding gimmick was launched to do just that) and President of the RFS Nikolai Tolstykh was slaughtered by the Sports Minister’s allies.” backpagefootball

“As half-time fare it seemed a little unusual. Boris Yuzefpolsky returned to his seat in the press box of the Central Stadium in Russia’s far-eastern city of Yekaterinburg and eyed the lightly frosted savoury lump handed to him by a stadium official. The words FC URAL were carefully baked into its top. A freezing 45 minutes later Yuzefpolsky tapped out the headline for his match report. ‘Gingerbread cookies don’t help as Ural go down 3-1 in their final match at the Central Stadium.’ After this, attention turns to the 2018 World Cup and a major remodelling programme for the arena. There are more numbers in Yuzefpolsky’s report. In three and a half years at the stadium FC Ural Sverdlovskaya Oblast have taken in 54 Russian Premier League matches, attended by 467,000 fans who have cheered 14 victories and 128 goals.” In Bed With Maradona

“The Russian weather warms, the Premier League clubs are feeling the heat of an end of season battle for Europe or survival. The fine performance by Zenit in the Europa League was a spring highlight and accompanied the club’s steady progress at home. While going out to reigning Champions Sevilla in two very good matches, the St. Petersburg side showed that it is possible to compete on two fronts, contrary to the English commentators.” backpagefootball

“Torpedo Moscow, in their latest incarnation, are a club with a whole heap of trouble. Fans warring with the owner, owner trying to placate investors, never-ending stream of bad media. One of the storied clubs of Russian football seems to want to curl up and die. Last weekend’s violence in Tula was another blow against soccer in Russia. Coming hot on the heels of the idiocy in Podgorica, the Arsenal and Torpedo fans seemed eager to grab headlines with a flare and firecracker display which presaged a full on riot.” backpagefootball

“I honestly thought I was dreaming as I followed the events on Friday night. I was on the overnight train back to Voronezh, still suffering from a wee bit of a fever, and honestly believed that I was watching an amazingly bad action movie from the 1980s. The idiots who turned up to put on a show of ‘Slavic’ force on Friday night in Podgorica, made a mockery of what sport should be. From inappropriate chants to throwing flares, knives, coins and stones, what should have been a straightforward international match between two not-unfriendly nations, turned into an inferno.” backpagefootball

“1: What did the fall season teach you? Saul: Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. The wealthiest side is top and looks likely to win the league (despite not playing well as a team); Spartak are experimenting with a foreign manager and failing, having expected him to bring instant success; the new sides are struggling, including with their finances; Terek are mid table; further down clubs have begun to disappear from the league structure. Having said all that, I’m really looking forward to things starting up again in a few weeks. Aleks: The first half of the season showed that Spartak are doing better than is generally thought. They’re the only team that’s currently unbeaten at home. Despite not having stability up front, Dynamo are doing better than expected, and have so far made it farther in the Europa League than they ever have, joining a select few teams to have gone unbeaten in the group stage in the process. …” Russian Football News

“Angry fans and impromptu protests are all the rage this Major League Soccer offseason. Being the relative neophites we supposedly are (but actually aren’t) here in the United States, we can take a few notes on how to send a strong message from fellow supporters around the world. Bear witness to the work of the pissed off fans of Zawisza Bydgoszcz. The Polish first division club is dead last in the league, so bad that it’s eight points behind the next worst team. They haven’t won in 10 matches, and it lost a friendly to a second division team this weekend.” Soccer Gods (Video)

“The Stadion Za Luzankami in Brno, Czech Republic, once held around 50,000 people. Opened in 1953, it was home to FC Zbrojovka Brno until 2001, and hosted the record attendance at a Czech First League match, when 44,120 watched the home team take on Slavia Prague in 1996-97. Brno were forced to move in 2001 as the stadium no longer met FIFA and Czech football association criteria. Plans to renovate or rebuild the stadium were put on hold in June 2012, and it currently stands dilapidated, with trees and weeds growing from the terraces.” WSC

“On a spring afternoon in late March 1992, The Eternal Derby is about to take place between city rivals Partizan and Red Star Belgrade at Red Star’s Marakana stadium. Partizan are seen by their rivals as everything they stand against. They are the club of the Yugoslav state and the army whilst Red Star are the club of Serbia and it is they alone who hold Serb values and will protect Serb identity in the face of increasing self determination from Croatia and Bosnia. It is their fans who were at Maksimir on the day that they fought with Dinamo Zagreb ultras the Bad Blue Boys and it was their fans who followed the call to arms to protect fellow Serbs where they were threatened as war broke out in the rapidly disintegrating Yugoslavia.” The Football Pink

“The future is often hard to predict. Nobody knows what lies around the corner, or what will happen next month let alone tomorrow. The same can be said of football; clubs rise and fall, players performances ebb and flow week-by-week, but that is the beauty of the game. Unpredictability reigns supreme. That is why this list, of eleven talented individuals, should not be taken too seriously. With all that in mind let CZEFootball present you with eleven names. Eleven footballers who are worth keeping an eye on throughout the course of the year. These are the Jedenáct.” CZEFootball

“When the 2014/15 Europa League kicked off its preliminary stages back in June, 195 teams began a journey which comes to an end in May at Warsaw’s impressive Stadion Narodowy. Whoever emerges victorious will become only the third team to lift a trophy inside Poland’s centrepiece stadium, with this season’s Polish Cup winners being the second. The first – reigning holders of said competition, Zawisza Bydgoszcz – were in amongst those 195 original Europa League teams, beginning their first ever foray into continental competition with a trip to Belgian side Zulte Waregem. The Second Qualifying Round tie may have ultimately ended in defeat for Zawisza, however it had come on the back of the most successful twelve months in the club’s near-70-year history.” In Bed With Maradona

“With the winter break approaching the top three clubs in the Synot Liga are covered by two points. Leading the way is Viktoria Plzen on thirty-five points, Sparta Prague are second on thirty-four and then, third, on thirty-three is Jablonec; then there a ten point chasm to Mlada Boleslav in fourth. It may be premature to call this a three horse title race; as always time will tell. Viktoria Plzen and Sparta Prague are no strangers to picking up silverware, with the two clubs winning four of the past five league titles. But for Jablonec, this is a relatively well-trodden path for them. The problem is they just never follow through with their autumnal promise. How they approach the next couple of months will tell us a lot about their ambition and whether they have the staying power and financial will to compete until the end of the season. History dictates they won’t.” CZEFootball

“After Sunday’s 3-0 loss in Israel, the success that saw Bosnia appear in this summer’s World Cup was pushed even further from relevance, though five months ago, the country’s first ever major tournament was cast as a potentially major step in unifying a young, divided nation. On the contrary, the idea of the Bosnia national team as a symbol of unity was always a mere myth. It is an easy story to tell for the journalist who never ventures out of Sarajevo’s old town – or, for the writer who relies solely on photos that emerge after the team’s success.” Soccer Gods

“With 25 goals in 44 games for Bulgaria and a record 253 in 333 games in domestic football, Petar Zhekov’s place in national football history is assured. As he turns 70, UEFA.com spoke to the five-time title winner – with PFC CSKA Sofia – who won the European Golden Boot in 1969, as well as Bronze Boots in 1970 and 1973.” UEFA

“Crimean teams are competing in the Russian league, and Ukrainian titan Shakhtar Donetsk has been forced to Kiev because of conditions around the Donbass Arena. As much as we may want soccer to exist it its own sanctified realm, geopolitics are always ready to intervene, especially when Vladimir Putin’s involved. To talk about that intervention, Igor Levenshtein, editor of the Commentary Daily News in Ukraine, joined the show to detail what effects the region’s uncertainty has had on Ukrainian, Russian, and European soccer.” Fusion (Video)