Behind the Curtain : Travels in Easter European Football
Armenia
When they made the trip to Armenia to face Dinamo Yerevan in September 1949, Dinamo Moscow were on their way to a fifth league title. After thirty-five minutes, though, they found themselves 3–0 down, and, despite pulling one back two minutes before half time, there was still a real possibility of a shock that could have derailed their championship charge. That, clearly, wouldn’t do, so General Blinov, deputy minister of the Ministry of State Security, telephoned the government room at the stadium and ordered the Armenian Minister of the Interior, Comrade Grigoryan, to take measures to ensure victory for Dinamo Moscow. Hearing the conversation, one of the heads of the Sports Committee of the Armenian Republic, an apparatchik whose name survives only as Simonyan, is said to have gone pale and whispered, ‘The people will not understand.’ Grigoryan, though, went to the Yerevan coach, Boris Apukhin, and explained the situation. He responded by replacing one of his experienced defenders with a youth-team player. Even worse, when the teams came out for the second half, a sinister figure in a black coat took up a position behind the Yerevan goal, every now and again hissing ‘Miss!’ when the goalkeeper went to gather a shot. Dinamo Moscow, not surprisingly, came back to win 4–3. Dinamo Yerevan’s next game was away to Stalinabad (now Dushanbe), a trip that necessitated a flight via Moscow. On arrival in the capital the players were thanked by General Blinov, and each given a gift of 2,500 roubles. Were they cheated? Were Dinamo Tbilisi prevented from winning the title? Were Dynamo Kyiv really opposed by Moscow? When everybody accuses everybody else, it is hard not to conclude that conspiracy is just an easy excuse. That tale has obvious elements of mythology, but the gist is probably true: no nation has been so put upon as the Armenians. In his final public speech, delivered in Liverpool in 1896, William Gladstone spoke of them as ‘a martyred people’ and said, ‘Of all the nations of the world, no history has been so blameless as the history of the Armenian people’. The following century brought massacres at the hands of two different enemies and a devastating earthquake; suffering has become a national characteristic. The first thing that struck me about Armenia was how much smoother the road became once I’d crossed the border from Georgia. The second, when our minibus stopped by a low hut just be
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>The headlines, of course, were made by Cristiano Ronaldo – how could they not be? – but just as important to how Manchester United fare this season are the two other summer signings, Raphaël Varane and Jadon Sancho. Varane, as he had been against Wolves on his debut, was composed – despite a midfield that occasionally threatened to disintegrate in front of him – and almost scored from a first-half corner. Sancho, though, struggled to make an impression. It’s still early and a level of fluency may come, but his struggles seemed to highlight the wider issue that, for all their array of fine players, United are some way from being a coherent team. At Dortmund he was at his best with space in front of him and with a full-back overlapping. Luke Shaw perhaps can offer that option but against teams who sit deep as Newcastle did, but was hard to know what Sancho was supposed to be doing.
And the list of shitting on United players by WIlson continues.
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