“When Slovakia’s Corgoň Liga re-emerges from its long winter break on the first weekend of March, the fixture most observers will be watching for is the one between Spartak Trnava and FC Nitra, the bottom two clubs. The reason is less the fact that both sides are in urgent need of points than that their last meeting, on September 14th last year, resulted in one of the most controversial games ever played in the country. Nitra went into that match in the top half of the table and in encouraging form. Two weeks earlier, I’d seen them draw 1-1 away to champions Žilina. Seydouba Soumah, their 21-year-old Guinean forward, justified his growing reputation with an outstanding performance and the whole team looked bright and full of running. Trnava, by contrast, were in a mess.” In Bed With Maradona

“The best footballer’s autobiography of recent years is probably I Am Zlatan Ibrahimović. In it, the Swedish striker recounts his rise from an ethnic ghetto in Malmö to greatness. Zlatan (as he is usually known) is currently banging in goals for Paris St Germain. Zlatan has a Bosnian father and Croatian mother. They married to get the dad a Swedish resident’s permit, and soon separated. Zlatan’s book, ghostwritten by David Lagercrantz, is an immigrant’s tale. In fact, having sold 700,000 copies in Sweden alone and been published in 15 countries, it’s probably the bestselling European immigrant’s tale since Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000). The book was also shortlisted for Sweden’s prestigious lit­erary award, the August Prize.” FT – Simon Kuper

“Mirko Vučinić showed up to the first day of soccer season this summer with a mustache. It was a thin one, and it made him look like a character out of an Italian neorealist homage to the dignity of the working class—handsome and proud, and heroic because ultimately he is up against forces that are far too great for him to succeed. Vučinić is the starting striker for Juventus, Italy’s Serie A defending champion. To date, though, he may be most famous for dropping his shorts, placing them on his head, and running around the pitch in his underwear after he scored a goal in an international match against Switzerland in 2010. You likely wouldn’t see that in an Italian neorealist film. But that’s all right, because Vučinić isn’t Italian. He’s Montenegrin, and Montenegro has a story of its own.” The Paris Review – 1

Offsides, Part 2
“Like Savićević, the Croatian Zlatko Kranjčar, fifty-six, had been a successful, offensive-minded player in his day, and one who understood the importance of international soccer. Nearing the end of his career in 1990 at the age of thirty-four, Kranjčar captained Croatia’s first national game of its post-Yugoslavia era. As a coach he led the Croatian national team into the 2006 World Cup. He had experience, and a lot of it. When Savićević hired him in 2010 as Montenegro’s new manager, it was Kranjcar’s eighteenth year of coaching and his twentieth job.” The Paris Review – 2

“The domestic football league of the old USSR was a vast, vibrant, and powerful competition, containing as it did clubs such as the Moscow giants Dynamo, Spartak, CSKA – and occasionally Torpedo – as well as influential teams from the republics, like the Dynamos of Kiev, Tbilisi, and Minsk. Evidently, the league would have been exceptionally strong and closely contested – it was so strong, in fact, that it rose to second place in UEFA’s league rankings.” World Soccer

“Twenty-six long years have passed since Hungary last participated in a major footballing tournament. It was the World Cup of 1986 in Mexico and even though confidence was high, the Magyars crashed out in the group stage after disappointing results to France and their bitter foes, the Soviet Union. In 1985 Hungarian football was at the centre stage of European football as a small side named Videoton from Szekesfehervar in Western Hungary shocked the continent to reach the UEFA Cup final after beating English giants Manchester United along the way. A 3-1 aggregate loss to Real Madrid in the final was to be expected, but nonetheless, it took nothing away from the achievement of the players who became the first Hungarian side to reach a major European final since Ferencváros ten years earlier.” In Bed With Maradona

“We’re not German; We’re not Polish; We’re Silesian. This is a common refrain from members of the Silesian minority in the industrial region of Upper Silesia in southern Poland. With a population of around 2,000,000, the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Union (GZM), whose largest city is Katowice, is one of the biggest urban agglomerations in Europe. For many years, this densely populated region straddled the border between Germany and Poland, with Katowice (Kattowitz) part of the German Empire and neighbouring Sosnowiec part of Congress Poland.” World Soccer

“Here’s a perfectly geeky question for your pub quiz night: which player was the top goalscorer for two different teams within the same season, both champions of their respective countries? Help: it was on two different continents. And in two different sports. Of course, posing that question would only make sense if you’re somewhere in what was once Yugoslavia. Maybe also in certain places in the US, such as Long Island and Manhattan’s Upper East Side – the old stomping grounds of Steve Zungul. The rest of the football World has forgotten about the player who had variously been nicknamed the ‘Yugoslav Gerd Müller’, ‘The Nureyev of soccer’ and, perhaps most famously, ‘The Lord of all Indoors’. The forward whom the legendary Giorgio Chinaglia, famous for his bad-mouthing of Beckenbauer, Cruyff and even Pelé, once described as ‘almost perfect’.” World Soccer

“It was supposed to be the ultimate football franchise: Eleven man armies that would prove communist superiority in the world’s most popular sport. But more than two decades after the USSR and the Eastern Block fell apart, the Dynamo movement is fading. This is the story of a football machine that rarely worked and, after ninety years of troubled existence, is still in search of its true identity.” World Soccer

“It’s not every week that Belarus sits as the hottest topic of conversation when it comes to European football. The former Soviet nation has struggled in its sporting development since the collapse of the communist state – despite Belarus maintaining its political ideals – and has rarely figured highly on the international stage. Neither a World Cup nor European Championship has bore witness to Belarusian talent and it seems somewhat fanciful to think that a transformation will occur during the qualification for Brazil in 2014 – which two defeats in the opening couple of fixtures attests to. However, the recent exploits of Viktor Goncharenko’s BATE Borisov side in the opening exchanges of the Champions’ League group stages points to a somewhat brighter future on the horizon.” Slavic Football Union

“The announcement of Russia’s host cities for the 2018 World Cup was hardly the big football story of the weekend. It all seems like a long way off right now – we’ve got Brazil to get through first. But, most football fans probably have an idea of what a World Cup in Brazil will look like, less so one in Russia, whose bid was tainted by the genuinely farcical scenario that will see Qatar hosting the second biggest sporting event in the world. In the desert. That, and the overwhelming stench of corruption that clings to FIFA’s bid process, but we all know about that. I’d rather focus on the allure of Russia’s World Cup.” Regista

“The Russian Premier League season started this July and Zenit picked up where they left off the prior season. Even though many of the key players suffered disappointment at Euros, by late July Zenit was already looking the strongest club in the league. With predominantly the same lineup as the previous championship campaign, Zenit were in cruise control sweeping its biggest rivals in succession: 2-0 over Dinamo Moscow, 3-1 away to CSKA Moscow, and a 5-0 demolishing of the most hated Spartak Moscow.” Think Football

“If you take a look at the official FIFA records, you will find that the Ukrainian national team, as a separate and recognized entity, has existed for only twenty years. Over these two decades their record has been rather unimpressive: one World Cup appearance in 2006, where they advanced to the quarterfinals and automatic qualification for Euro 2012 as co-hosts. But this unremarkable performance belies a glorious footballing legacy that Ukraine left behind as part of the Soviet Union.” World Soccer

“The Slavic Football Union (SFU) is a collective effort to provide English-language coverage and analysis of the leagues, clubs, and cultures of central and eastern European football. Despite the Iron Curtain falling over twenty years ago, for many football fans the central and eastern European game remains shrouded in mystery. Troubled by the insufficient and scattered information available in English, the SFU is designed to assemble intelligent journalism devoted to football being played throughout the former Eastern Bloc countries.” Slavic Football Union

“If you take a look at the official FIFA records, you will find that the Ukrainian national team, as a separate and recognized entity, has existed for only twenty years. Over these two decades their record has been rather unimpressive: one World Cup appearance in 2006, where they advanced to the quarterfinals and automatic qualification for Euro 2012 as co-hosts. But this unremarkable performance belies a glorious footballing legacy that Ukraine left behind as part of the Soviet Union. The books say that Russia is the official successor national team of the USSR. This appropriation of history overlooks just how influential Ukrainian players and clubs were in the Soviet era. Ukraine exists as an independent state since just 1992. But football in Ukraine goes much further back.” In Bed With Maradona

“Cracks are easy to paper over, sometimes, but at the moment the Airtricity League feels like a massive crack in the tectonic plate surface of Irish football. The magma of Monaghan United burst out and left the league two weeks ago, and now there’s more rumbling coming out of Dundalk. The paper is European football. Last season saw Shamrock Rovers make history by becoming the first Irish men’s team to make the group stages of a European competition. The expectation is that this year, some other Irish sides will be able to provide a welcome distraction from the perilous state the league is in.” In Bed With Maradona