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Zenit
St. Petersburg and the Romance of Europe
The
latest football season in Russia has finished so
predictably that it almost made the Premiership
of recent years look exciting. For the ninth
time in the last ten seasons Spartak Moscow won
the championship and perennial bridesmaids
Lokomotiv Moscow rolled in second. The only real
excitement in the league was the race for third
place, the coveted bronzovoye, which leads to a
place in the UEFA Cup. This year the biggest
team from Russia’s second biggest city, Zenit
St. Petersburg, finished third and next season
could be up against some of Europe’s finest;
if they draw a British side I may offer my
services, as I must be one of the few Brits to
have regularly watched the side on their home
territory…
I
studied in St. Petersburg a few years ago, and
the summer before travelling I spent a lot of
time working out how much football I would be
able to watch; Russian grammar and its spatial
prepositions barely seemed to matter. Once in
the city I found myself itching to go and watch
Zenit live on home turf, the Petrovskiy Stadium,
but getting someone to go with me proved
difficult. Russian football generally suffers
from low attendances, due in part to financial
constraint. Tickets may be cheap by our
standards at around two pounds, but to most
Russians a ticket is a sizeable chunk of a
monthly income of forty or fifty pounds.
People
are also put off attending live games because of
well-documented crowd problems. There is a far
right wing element in many Russian football
crowds, complete with Nazi salutes; black or
dark-skinned players are routinely jeered, or
fans make monkey noises at them. Some team
fanzines concentrate on the violence that
precedes and follows matches rather than on the
games themselves. The Russian police have taken
steps to combat these problems, although to the
hardcore minority it is often the police, and
not rival fans, who are seen as the real enemy.
Although hooliganism is undoubtedly a problem, I
have not experienced any serious violence inside
Zenit’s ground. I have, however, been shocked
by some of the tasteless jeers and chants coming
from the crowd. In my first game I saw Zenit
beat Shinnik Yaroslavl’ 2-0, throughout which
the home crowd booed Shinnik’s every touch of
the ball and intimidated the referee into making
some rather biased decisions. One thing that
really stood out was the shockingly low level of
football, especially when one considered that
this was meant to be the Russian equivalent of
the Premiership. Shinnik, which translates as
‘the tyre-maker’, looked like they
couldn’t even spell football, whilst Zenit
conspired to mis-kick and launch perfect rugby
conversions towards the goal throughout the
ninety minutes.
In
1999 Zenit won the Russian Cup and were entered
into the UEFA Cup, but lost to Bologna in the
first round. However, just as I was making a
summer visit in 2000, opportunities for European
glory once again lay in their lap, this time in
the shape of the Inter-Toto Cup. Hardly the
Champions League, but for Zenit the chance to be
a medium-sized fish in a relatively small pond,
and I went to every game I could.
It
was a pleasant summer evening as I and my ex-pat
friends went through the three security barriers
for the first game of the competition, standing
out a mile but not caring – football matches
were about the only time in St. Petersburg that
I felt immersed in a genuinely Russian culture
and not one that was there solely for tourists.
Security had been beefed-up since my last visit,
with police confiscating all alcohol and the
wooden poles of flags on entrance to the ground.
Following this, everyone was required to walk
through a metal detector and finally to hand
over any plastic bottles of drink they may be
carrying. Despite all of this some fans managed
to smuggle fireworks into the ground, which were
set off throughout the match.
The
game started and I was quite surprised, upon
finding a seat – nobody bothers sitting in
their correct seat – that in the two years
since my last visit Zenit had turned into a
decent side, capable of passing the ball around
well and looking lively at set pieces. In the
end they ran out 3-0 winners against Slovenian
also-rans Primorye. The atmosphere in the
streets after the match contained a sense of
victory, but of a victory which had been
expected. With their newfound confidence in a
better team, Zenit fans were becoming
complacent. But surely a tougher test awaited in
the second round, where Tatabanye of Hungary was
the opponent.
The
game against the Hungarians was the first time
in all my visits that it had rained. The Russian
football season runs throughout the summer and
most matches kick-off in the evening, meaning
that conditions for matches are often perfect.
On this occasion, however, the heavens opened on
the uncovered stadium, and to make matters worse
Zenit were 1-0 down with 90 minutes up. The
determined Zenit front line pushed forward,
however, and managed to force an equaliser in
the 91st minute. Straight from the kick off they
won the ball and scored a 92nd minute winner
from what was, as the big-screen replay
confirmed, a decidedly offside position. But by
now I was past being critical, and joined in the
post-match singing in the streets and on the
Metro. I’ve never experienced an atmosphere
like it at a football match, a mixture of sheer
joy, disbelief and, above all, relief – Zenit
had played dreadfully for 90 minutes and in
truth had deserved to lose.
My
summer stint in St. Petersburg was drawing to a
close, and I was understandably gutted to
discover that on the day of my departure, Zenit
would play Bradford City in the third round of
the Inter-Toto Cup. I would miss the game by a
matter of hours, but my conscience (and
dissertation) forced me into returning home as
planned. Bradford proved no exception to the
rule of English clubs taking the Inter-Toto
competition lightly, rolling over 4-0 on
aggregate. Zenit went on to lose in the
two-legged final to Celta Vigo, due largely to a
mistake made by their goalkeeper in the dying
seconds, who was swiftly transferred to Torpedo
Moscow.
So
a short season of European romance and drama was
over for Zenit, but it had been good to see them
progress even in this somewhat unimportant
tournament. They even made a brief appearance on
Sky Sports and were praised in the British press
for their ‘discipline’ and ‘technical
ability’.
That season was also notable for the departure
of Zenit’s star player of recent seasons,
Alexandr Panov. Short, quick and crop-headed,
Panov first made his name as Russia’s answer
to Michael Owen when he scored twice against
France away during Russia’s 3-2 victory in the
Euro 2000 qualifying campaign. By the time I
arrived in Russia in June 2000 a multi-million
pound transfer to St. Etienne had already been
sealed, although Panov was to stay with Zenit
for a few months longer. At the end of his
farewell game, his number eleven shirt was
thrown into the crowd (causing a rather violent
scramble to claim ownership) and a feeling of
loss filled the stadium, but it was countered by
a feeling of pride that one of their own was
going on to better things.
Unfortunately
Panov’s career since that day has been similar
to that of many Russian footballers of the last
ten years who have moved abroad. For players
earning only forty or fifty pounds per month, a
move to any western country is lucrative, and
the result is that many Russian players end up
coasting in poor leagues or as bit-part players
at bigger clubs. Such was the fate of Panov.
Having moved to France he started well but
following an injury was loaned out to Swiss side
Lausanne, where he barely played. On his return
he was in and out of a Saint-Etienne side which
had by then been relegated to the French Second
Division. Now back in Russia with Dynamo Moscow,
Panov is determined to prove that his goals
against France in that remarkable match were not
just a flash in the pan; with the World Cup on
the horizon, the perfect opportunity could be
about to present itself.
Aside from Zenit, St. Petersburg has two other
teams of note, Dinamo and the newly formed
Lokomotiv-Zenit-2. I don’t know a lot about
Dinamo, but have had the pleasure of watching
Lokomotiv. Until last season Lokomotiv was a
club in the Russian first division but having
been spectacularly relegated, gaining a massive
nine points in the process, the club went
bankrupt. Zenit quickly took advantage and the
new Lokomotiv is now a farm-club for its richer
neighbours.
However,
I was lucky enough to see part of the defiant
last stand, a match against promotion chasing
Shinnik Yaroslavl’, whom I had seem play
dreadfully against Zenit two years earlier. That
summer the Lokomotiv played in the 64,000 all-seater
Kirov stadium, and it was free to get in.
Despite the pleasant walk from the Metro, and
attractive location on the Finnish Gulf, the
stadium was decrepit, with weeds poking through
the concrete rows underneath the plastic seats.
Outside a few bored policemen stopped people
from taking their beer into the ground, and kept
an eye on the twelve or so hardcore Lokomotiv
fans, all of whom were about fifteen years old
and all of whom indulged in some rather
tasteless Nazi hand saluting during the game.
Having bought my programme, I and my friend, the
only one I have mad enough to want to watch
first division Russian football, entered the
massive stadium, in which 200 or so fans were
sheepishly scattered across one of the sixteen
seating blocks. There was nothing in the others,
save the weeds and an even smaller group of away
supporters who seemed miles away between all the
empty space. No danger of crowd trouble here,
we’d all have been long gone by the time they
reached us.
Once
the game started Lokomotiv showed why they were
twenty or so points adrift at the foot of the
first division. Shinnik took a 2-0 lead, and
even Loko’s hardcore teenage fan base had
trouble encouraging their side, preferring
stupidly to set fire to newspaper blowing around
the stands instead.
The
second half was to see a different side emerge
from the dressing room. Although already
relegated and doomed to bankruptcy Loko rallied,
scoring twice to draw 2-2 and denting
Shinnik’s promotion prospects in the process.
Seeing their second goal go in gave me more
pleasure than the many I’ve seen in the
Premiership. But then again I am a Leicester
City fan; most of the goals I’ve seen lately
have been scored against us.
While
all things football may be looking pretty bad
for the Moscow sides, having just endured their
worst season in Europe for many years, the same
cannot be said of St. Petersburg’s leading
club. Zenit’s best finish in the Russian
league since it began and an appearance in next
season’s UEFA Cup are coupled with high hopes
for the future from club President Vitaliy Mutko,
who sees his club becoming league champions
within the next few years. Mutko is President of
the new Russian Premier League, which looks
destined to commence next season, and he is
determined that Zenit should be able to compete
with the Moscow big boys on a permanent basis
under this new structure. Maybe next season’s
UEFA Cup romance won’t just be a one off, but
something that becomes a regular fixture at the
Petrovskiy… |
