“Shakhtar Donetsk’s defensive midfielder Frederico Rodrigues Santos, better known as Fred, has been very much the unsung hero of a stellar side this season. We have featured a vast array of Shakhtar Donetsk players of late, but with Paulo Fonseca leading his side to a 13-point lead over rivals Dynamo Kyiv, and with winning six out of six games in the Europa League, it is not difficult to praise the work done at Shakhtar Donetsk this season.” futbolgrad

“Shakhtar’s entertaining 4-3 victory over Dynamo Kyiv in Monday’s Ukrainian Derby had it all—the fastest goal ever in a meeting between the two sides, two own goals from Dynamo defender Yevhen Khacheridi, and two comebacks from Shakhtar to claim the three points and effectively clinch the title, and, of course, a fight that led to a sending off for Dynamo striker Júnior Moraes. The intense rivalry between the two sides has so often reached a boiling point that Ukrainian website Tribuna published a list of the five ‘best’ fights to take place during their matches.” Futbolgrad

“The scoreboard at the Maksimir stadium indicated 94:45 minutes during the mid-September Champions League game between Dinamo Zagreb and Arsenal. In the fifth minute of extra-time, Arsenal urgently searched for late equalizer but the match ended with a historic 2-1 Dinamo victory. But the score could have been even more decisive for Dinamo.” Futbolgrad (Video)

“(1) LUZHNIKI STADIUM – MOSCOW. History: Luzhniki officially opened on July 31, 1956, intended for use as the Soviet Union’s central stadium. In 57 years, the facility has undergone two major renovations – prior to the 1980 Summer Olympics and in 1996-1997, when a roof was added to comply with UEFA standards. The stadium has hosted the Summer Olympics, UEFA Cup and Champions League finals, and numerous Russian national team matches. It has also served as the home pitch for Spartak, CSKA, Torpedo, Rubin and Anzhi over the years. Luzhniki also has a dark chapter, as 66 people died here in the worst stadium catastrophe in Russia’s history during an UEFA Cup match between Spartak Moscow and Dutch side Harlem on the 20th of October 1982. …” Russian Football News

“Ross Jenkins is a 25-year-old midfielder who spent last season at Romanian top-flight club Poli Timișoara. He broke into the Watford first team under Brendan Rodgers in 2008, and has also played for Plymouth, Barnet and Crawley Town, as well as the England Under-20s. Here he talks to Will Unwin about his adventures in Romania and the challenges of finding a club overseas…” the set pieces

“Eastern European football fans have long pondered what a Soviet national team (Sbornaya) would have looked like, had the Socialist camp not collapsed in the early 1990s. A 1990s team consisting of a young and bright Andrey Arshavin supporting Ukrainian figurehead Andriy Shevchenko would surely be a team that would live long in the hearts of football hipsters everywhere.” futbolgrad

“Russia crashing out of the Euros on Monday night came as no surprise to anyone, inside of Russia. Aside from the brave showing put on by the gobshites in the street and stadium of Marseilles against their fellow inadequates from England and Wales, it was a real tournament to forget. The words Russian Turmoil will be heard regularly in the coming two years.” backpagefootball

“Lokomotiv Moscow’s last home game of the season was against crisis club Mordovia Saransk, who needed a win for a relegation play-off, and the choice of which Moscow football club to watch was narrowed to two. CSKA were away to poor Rubin Kazan and beat them as they strolled to another title. Spartak were also on the road, at Ufa, and the only other option was to go to Khimki and watch Dynamo look for a favour from Zenit. Apart from being Tim’s favourite team, it was a no-brainer to go to Cherkizovo.” backpagefootball

Dynamo Moscow – An historic failure, a long time coming
“A 3-1 defeat in Naples meant that Dynamo Moscow’s chances of making it to the quarter finals of the 2015 Europa League looked slim; but after some solid performances in the competition already, turning the tie around was not out of the question. In the end a fairytale comeback wasn’t meant to be – Rafael Benitez’s side held on despite Dynamo’s best efforts with the second leg ending 0-0, though this was a performance and a team that the fans could be proud of after years of mismanagement and under-achievement.” backpagefootball

“Former Partizan Belgrade manager Marko Nikolić, who is considered as one of the most talented Serbian managers at the moment, got himself into the spotlight last week for the wrong reason, and this incident is likely to have a negative impact on his career. Nikolić, who is now plying his trade at NK Olimpija Ljubljana, called his player Blessing Eleke a “black idiot”—a racial slur that was widely reported throughout Europe.” futbolgrad

“The story is an improbable one that is typical of the industry that retold and reshaped it; a group of war prisoners who take on their captors on a football pitch and surprisingly manage to defy the odds (and instructions) to end the game in a draw. There is an American hero in the form of a rookie goalkeeper who makes a string of saves as well as the obligatory happy ending with the players managing to escape after being swept away by a jubilant crowd. That is the script of Escape to Victory a movie that, more than three decades since its release, remains arguably the finest fictional portrayal of the game of football. It works not because the match action is particularly good (although it is done better than most) but mostly as the story draws on the powerful emotions that sport can foster. The plot itself might not be overly credible yet the idea that sport can deliver hope and instil faith where there seems to be none is totally believable.” Football Pink

“Last week marked the two-year anniversary of Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. Football clubs and its fans were also deeply impacted by this event, and within one year all three major clubs Tavriya Simferopol, FK Sevastopol, and the lesser-known Zhemchuzhina Yalta had to declare bankruptcy, and were dissolved, later to re-emerge as new clubs that could participate in the Russia football pyramid. These new clubs TSK (Tavriya Simferopol Crimea) Simferopol, SK Chernomorskogo Flota (SKChF) Sevastopol, and Zhemchuzhina Yalta played a handful of games in the third-tier Russian Professional Football League. On August 22, 2014 the UEFA Emergency Panel stated “that any football matches played by Crimean clubs organised under the auspices of the Russian Football Union (RFU) will not be recognised by UEFA until further notice.” The clubs were then disbanded.” Futbolgrad

“We all love a good underdog story. It’s probably why we are all so encapsulated by Leicester City’s brilliant form in the Premiership. Things aren’t too dissimilar in the Ekstraklasa, Poland’s top flight division. An unsatisfactory start to the season by some of the big teams – namely Wisła Kraków & Lech Poznań – combined with an exuberant push from the smaller teams has paved the way for an unlikely leader at the top of the table during the Winter break – Piast Gliwice, who sit five points clear of 2nd placed Legia Warsaw.It all seems hard to believe for the minnows from Gliwice who have spent so many years in the depths of the Polish footballing pyramid.” backpagefootball

“Slurping – the sound that suck calves make when you’re weaning them, or pigs at the trough, or Russians drinking hot tea. It isn’t racism from me, they don’t want to let the tea cool, or be ‘civilized’ and add milk. I was on a platzkart train from Voronezh to Moscow and my neighbours were all having breakfast and slurping tea. I’d fallen asleep just before midnight cheesed off. In the four bunk kupe next to mine a group of relatively well-heeled men and women in their mid-20’s were drinking tea and talking politics. They were liberal and very anti-Putin. Any other time I’d have an interest in their conversation, though when they kept commenting about a family from Tajikistan in the next kupe, I spoke out.” backpagefootball

“This morning I grabbed a coffee with a friend who works with a national championship club here in Russia. In the luxurious surrounds of the McCafe near Kievskaya Station we discussed the impending doom in his club. We’d soldiered together in 2010/11 and, then, at just 25, he was ready for greater things. I recommended him to a position with a Moscow-based club and after only four months he was brought away to a National Championship club to work his magic there. As we drank our cappuccinos he began to tell about a coming bust.” backpagefootball

“While working on a year end review with all the fun of the fair and recovering from a series of dentist appointments, a brilliant article flashed across my LinkedIn page that sent me into uproar. It nudged to restart an article from October which I felt was going to sound too unreal. Thanks to our apparatchiks here in Russia, I needn’t have worried, the unreal just got real again.” backpagefootball

“Last Monday I was at my desk updating a survey I’d carried out at the end of the Summer when, on the Russian search portal Yandex, news flashed up of an incident in Syria. Apparently a Russian plane had been shut down by Turkish forces and the pilot killed. I turned to my colleague Sergey and asked him if I was reading this news right, he shook his head and growled, ‘This is all shit, complete shit’. The facts are still in dispute, the Turks (those same kind folks who imprison dissenting journalists, buy oil from ISIS and allow Syrian Kurds be slaughtered) claim the plane was in their airspace. The Russians (and surviving navigator) contradict this.” backpagefootball

“Today we travel back to 1945, when Croats and Russians played the first football match against each other. Since the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Western world perceived communism as a common enemy and thus that space of the world seemed far away from rest of Europe. At this time, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a part of the Western side, with whom they shared values and beliefs, thus they had not recognized the Soviet Union, and so the interwar period was marked by alienation between the two countries. During the Second World War, the Independent State of Croatia was one of Nazi Germany’s last standing allies, and unlike in the Soviet Union the beautiful game was still played in Zagreb in those dark years.” Russian Football (Video)