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| november 2012 #9 |

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| november 2012 edition |

9 | football&social networksFootballers often use social networks. Is that good or bad?

19 | old devil, strong devilArticle about legend of Manchester United - Paul Scholes and his impact after return to football.

13The successful story of the Dragons

article from redactor Rolands juhna

3

first star and pioneer of african football

Eugene n'jo lea

Photo | eurosport.fr

21 | Malaga - a pack of wolvesSpanish side Malaga has turned into one of the most exiting teams in European football.

25 | language problems...Scandal in Latvian football. Language problems have reached Latvian na-tional team.

29 | Solid start for betisSpanish La Liga side Real Betis has made a good start this season. Are they on way to success?

31 | what the f**k?Russian football experiences some unpleasant moments.

39 | first goals and wins!Some of the most actual headlines in October.

3 | november 2012

Honestly, before I started to write this ar-ticle, I didn’t knew who Eugene N’Jo Lea is. This footballer was something new for me. I had idea to write something about French football and while I looked for in-teresting material, I saw his name. And you know what? His name was the reason why I started to look information about him. N’Jo Lea... Sounds like he’s from Af-rica. 50’s, 60’s... Hmm, many countries in Africa just got their independence. at that time. France, Africa, football, hard times... Could be interesting! I’ll tell you every-thing I could find out about Eugene N’Jo Lea. In this article, I will mostly mention him simply, as Eugene. Eugene N’Jo Lea was born 15 July 1931, in Cameroon. At that time, ma-jor part of Cameroon was under reign of France. Good education was a chance for local youth. Eugene was keen to break out from cruel world what was surround-ing him in Cameroon. He also had some passion for football. Eugene gained some experience while playing football for Vent Lallane club, which was founded by French immigrants in Cameroon. Despite fact that main passion for Eugene were studies, he really was a talented foot-baller. Some French journalists later com-pared him with panther. And that’s not only because his quick and lean body. N’Jo Lea means “panther” in Duala language. But back to studies... In 1951, Eugene had chance to leave Cameroon and study in France. That was chance to achieve something and football still was just for fun. When Eugene arrived to France, he joined local amateur club in Roanne. And there’s even some “legends”, that Eugene scored 12 goals in his first

match for CO Roche-la-Molière club. I don’t really know is that a true, but in some resources I found such information. Anyway, his tal-ent was obvious and it was just a question of time, till someone would notice him. Eugene also had some memorable matches in French Cup together with his club. One of them came in a match against Montpellier (back then it was called Olympique Montpellié-rain). Eugene scored a hat-trick and ASSE (Saint-Etienne) scout Pierre Garonnaire noticed this per-formance. Scout of Les Verts was really impressed and he came to Jean Snella, who was manager of Saint-Etienne at that time. Initially, Snella wasn’t really interested in signing of Cameroonian, but in the end, Eugene became part of ASSE. Garonnaire saw that Cameroonian could grow into a great striker. Eu-gene had good conditions to make his dreams true. He studied in Saint-Etienne and club also helped him to merge studies and football. Exotic striker also attracted some attention from local press and journalists were interested to see him in action. Eugene made his debut in Division 1 (now Ligue 1) in 1954 against Toulouse. Cameroonian student impressed almost every-one, scoring two goals. But that wasn’t enough for Jean Snella. Eu-gene played just 34 matches in first two seasons with ASSE, scor-ing 9 goals in Division 1. He mostly

eugene...It's a story about french football. About saint etienne and Cameroonian footballer eugene n'jo lea. This man was a major part of saint etienne club in the end of 50's. He helped les verts to win their first french title and he became a good inspiration for african foot-ballers, who dreamed about playing in french league.

this won't be the longest story i have wrote for magazine. But that doesn't change the fact that this story is really interesting. Honestly. Eugene n'jo lea was an important figure for french and african football.

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will be needed a new leader. Manager could only hope that Eugene will be ca-pable to maintain pressure and be able to become a leader. It was something new. He was in centre of attention. De-fending champions had to show solid performance, otherwise fans wouldn’t understand that. Also, there was another memorable moment in history of ASSE. Club had to face a debut in European competition. And as it mostly happens, such debuts can bring real joy or simply a disappointment. Debut of ASSE was somewhere in a middle of that. Team had to travel to Scotland. ASSE had to play against Glasgow Rangers. And begin-ning of this match was really optimistic. Mekhloufi scored opening goal in 14th minute and there were some reasons for optimism. Rangers quickly calmed down French team and after just a five minutes, score was 1-1. And then home team took initiative and in second half they man-aged to score two goals. ASSE couldn’t an-swer and match ended with a score 3-1. Rangers won. After three weeks, both teams met again. This time, in France. Once again Saint-Etienne had great start, open-ing score in 18th minute, but in middle of second half, Rangers scored so needed goal. ASSE midfielder Jean Oleksiak man-aged to keep some intrigue in this match, scoring goal in 72th minute. One more goal was needed and local fans were singing various chants in Stade Geoffroy Guichard. Full of joy, full of hopes and disappointment at the end. Rangers kept the needed score. ASSE won 2-1 but they were short to qualify for the next round. Debut in European competitions quickly came to the end. But that was just a begin-ning of the season. Long season in Divi-sion 1 was awaiting ASSE and their newly crowned leader Eugene. Situation in local league wasn’t much more optimistic as performance in European Cup. ASSE had slow start of season. Then Les Verts slow-ly started to improve their performance and soon Saint-Etienne was again in top three. Third, fourth, fifth, fourth, third... All season long, ASSE was in top three or near it, but in the end, they finished just 7th. Eugene’s statistics also weren’t so impressive as some could expect. He scored just 14 goals in Division 1. Even such numbers were enough to become a top scorer of ASSE. Mekhloufi scored just 9 goals and left team in April of 1958, joining Swiss club Servette. Overall, sea-son wasn’t the most successful one, but Saint-Etienne at least managed to win a Coupe Charles Drago. In final, ASSE faced Nice and thanks to goals of Nyers and Oleksiak, match ended with a win 2-1.

got playing time in cup matches. And there he always scored solid amount of goals. And then came time, when Snella simply had to give Eugene a chance. He slowly improved and it was worth to give him a try. In 1956/1957 season Eu-gene finally got his breakthrough. Saint-Etienne got lead in Division 1 just after few rounds and they managed to keep number one spot till the end of season. And it was be-cause of Eugene. He finally was key player for ASSE, playing as centre forward. Snella gave credit of trust for Eugene and he fulfilled it for all 100%. ASSE won their first league title in history of club. No one could stop them throughout the season. Same I can say about Eugene. He was unstoppable. 29 goals in 32 games! Just Thadee Cisowski (33 goals) and Just Fontaine (30 goals) had better numbers than our Cam-eroonian hero. Eugene had sensa-tional season and partnership with his partner in attack - Rachid Me-khloufi, who scored 25 goals and also was one of the best scorers in league. For ASSE, Division 1 title wasn’t the only one this season. They also won Trophee des Cham-pions same year. Next season was harder for ASSE. One of the leading play-ers of Saint-Etienne, experienced Dutchman Kees Rijvers left club. He returned to his homeland and joined Feyenoord. Such depar-ture meant was a sign that there

Saint-Etienne had wonder-ful squad back in 50’s. There was not only Eugene N’Jo Lea, but also such names, as Rachid Mekhloufi, Dutchman Kees Rijvers, Claude Abbes, Richard Tylinski and others. These and other names helped ASSE to win their first French title in history of club. Eugene was brilliant that season......

7 | november 2012

Season of 1958/59 became the last sea-son for Eugene with Saint-Etienne. All hopes, once again were on him. ASSE had terrible start of season, being placed in last place after first nine rounds of Divi-sion 1. Later, they had a lot of interesting moments throughout the season. ASSE slowly climbed up and even reached 7th spot for one round. Then they once again felt down and for most of the season, ASSE were fighting for the place in top 10. Lucky for them, some important wins at the end of season, helped to finish season at 6th place. Saint-Etienne lacked consist-ency. In some matches they were really good, for example, ASSE had important home win over Lyon at the end of season in Derby du Rhone. Some other matches turned into disaster and that’s the main reason why this season was so colourful. Individually for Eugene, this season was even better than previous. Cameroonian scored total of 23 goals, 18 of them in Division 1. Everything seemed fine, but Eugene felt really tired. Reason was sim-ple. He already started his studies in Lyon and he had to travel between these towns all the time. It was exhausting, so Eugene made his move to Lyon in July of 1959. Lyon wasn’t so successful team at time, when Eugene played there. In his first season with Les Gones, Cameroonian striker played just 22 games and scored 9 goals in French league. Despite playing just 2/3 of matches, Eugene became the leading scorer of Lyon. Season anyway wasn’t successful as they finished 16th in French league. There were some hopes that something could change next season, but it was another failure for Les Gones. After 38 matches they had only 34 points, just three points more than in previous season. Lyon was placed 15th and Eugene finished this season with 12 goals in Divi-sion 1. For him there were some changes coming up once again. His studies in Lyon slowly came to end and Eugene got his degree in public law. He was ready to con-tinue studies in Paris, capital of France. In Paris, football career of Eu-gene came to end. He joined Racing Club de Paris and played just two matches to-gether with this club, scoring no goals. Eugene had chance to become a trainee diplomat in Rome. It meant that he had to choose - studies&career or football. Eu-gene chose career of diplomat and there he was as racy, as he was on football pitch. But before fully quitting his footballer ca-reer, Eugene made one really important step in development of French football. Together with legendary striker Just Fon-taine, Eugene founded the National Union of Professional Footballers. It was ma-jor step forward for all footballers, who

ideas were clear only for Eugene. He had clear vision of football in Africa. Multiple visits in various African countries, multiple meet-ings with various politicians and other important people, but no result. There was vision how to create some professional foot-ball competitions in Africa and bring everything closer to level, that Europe had. But no one was interested. For some people, that seemed like something im-possible. Reasons were various. Some politicians simply didn’t cared about situation in coun-try and they had only personal ambitions to get more powerful and wealthy. And nothing more. Country, people? Who cares... Eugene did, but he had little sup-port. Especially in Africa. His friends and colleagues in France understood his ideas and they knew it’s possible to do that, but they were in France. If local au-thorities in Cameroon weren’t interested, no one could do any-thing about that. Eugene tried to bring his ideas to life in some other African countries. He made some visits to Senegal but there situation was similar. No one had real interest to do something. Once again, priorities were dif-ferent... Honestly, Eugene said really right thing, that he should be thankful to God about every-thing. Danger and threats sur-rounded his life from the moment he tried to change something in his continent. I know that there’s often such situations, when some group of people or even countries are struggling for freedom and independence, but then comes that beautiful moment when they really become free. There’s a joy and happiness all around, everyone is celebrating that, but... Biggest problem comes af-ter that freedom is gained. When that group of people are fighting for freedom - they are united, they feel unselfish and some of them are even ready to sacrifice themselves just to make those ideas become a reality. Idealists or simply naive people? I don’t know, but I know one thing for sure - after they achieve what they want, there comes the most cruel part of all that fight. There starts a real battle for power

who played in France at that time. Legendary Frenchman Raymond Kopa later de-scribed situation in French football, telling that “Foot-ballers are slaves!”. Situation wasn’t pleasing for footballers at that time. They earned rela-tively small money and clubs had a lot of power. Every club had full control about salaries of their players. If club boss didn’t liked something, he could simply decrease salary of footballer. Even if he was important and famous one. But idea of Eugene changed everything. Only thanks to him, everything slowly start-ed to change and footballers earned more privileges. Eu-gene launched this idea and his successors UNFP into seri-ous organization. For many footballers, end of their career is really emotional and hard moment. It’s hard to leave in past some-thing what you really love. But for Eugene retirement came different way. He later admit-ted: “I became a football play-er just by accident.” That’s why he easily switched striped jer-sey of Paris club to diplomat suite. Footballers career can bring some health problems and injuries but that’s noth-ing, compared to life of dip-lomat at that time. Eugene understood that, he once even said: “I met a lot of people who had different views. I had op-position to my ideas. But I also can feel thankful to God, be-cause there were many power-ful people, who could make me simply disappear.” 60’s were quite a crazy times in Africa. Many countries just had their independence and there was massive battle for power be-tween the politicians. Eugene worked in many countries, representing his home coun-try Cameroon, but later he decided to return to Africa. He understood the value that football could bring to Africa. Importance of football was slowly becoming only bigger. For developing countries, it was chance to get some extra attention and also some fi-nancial bonuses. But all those

Racing Club de Paris was the last club in career of Eugene N’Jo Lea. He played just two games for the Racingmen. He had chance to play more and continue his career, but for Eugene football wasn’t in the first place at that time and he decided to go to Rome and become a trainee diplomat there.

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attention. And that’s why I’m bit confused about this story. Was it a happy or sad story? Honestly, I have no idea. Prob-ably the only person, who could give verdict about it all, was Eugene. But I really feel good about fact, that I wrote to our readers this story. It’s important not to forget such a bright minds and innova-tors. They did a huge job to make football better, to make it more “modern” and even more popular. Without such persons, as Eugene was, foot-ball would develop much more slowly. I’m sceptical about ideals and idealists nowadays. Many of them are just telling things people want to hear and believe. Reason is simple - to get into the poli-tics, get some power&money.

Cristian LiberumFollow me on Twitter

@Cristianliberum

Eugene n'jo lea in jersey of lyon. He spent just two seasons there, before moving to paris where he ended his career.

between those people, who were ready to give away their lives for comrades just few days ago. That one, big group of people who wanted to be free, splits to smaller groups of people, who sees their own way, how to build a new country. It’s good if everything goes the peaceful way, but it’s horrible if first blood appears on streets... And in Africa, there were a lot of conflicts and they still exist in many countries nowadays. And it’s all because of power... I think situation in Africa back then was more cruel than now, because times has changed a lot. Back then it was much more harder to tell the World what is happening there. Now there’s inter-net, which helps to spread those news and ideas around the World in just a few clicks. If we look to Eugene, he survived all those hard times, but there also were some painful moments for him. His son William also became a footballer and played in various French clubs, like Par-is Saint Germain, Lens and Caen. At that time, he could be a part of Cameroon na-tional team, but he was never called-up. And that’s only because of his father. You can call it a revenge or something else, but William never had a chance to play for his native country. Another painful moment was a loss of his close friend, Diallo Telli, who died in Guinean prison in 1977... Eugene N’Jo Lea died 23 October 2006, aged 75. For many years, he suf-fered from illness. Almost no one gave an attention to his death. Fortunately, his old club, Saint-Etienne remembered about their former star and before match against Marseille, there was moment of silence held in memory of Eugene. Nice and so needed gesture from club for such an underrated person, like Eugene was. It’s really sad that such an innovator and bright person stayed in shadow for many years. After his footballer career, he had to face all the worse characteristics the hu-man being has. Now he would face simply opposite attitude, people would be inter-ested to hear new and innovative ideas. Maybe he would turn into a millionaire, maybe he would even get some awards from various countries, maybe... I don’t know what more, but I know for sure that there wouldn’t be such an unfair attitude against this great man. There was good quote from Just Fontaine about Eugene. “He had new ideas every 30 seconds,” said legendary Frenchman. It’s really ironi-cal situation that Eugene found support and understanding in France, but in same time, no one wanted listen and help him in his homeland. And such happens often. You seek for some understanding from people you know, but no one gives any

That’s simple and I think many will agree with me. But Eugene was different. He wasn’t selfish, he wasn’t looking for pow-er or something like that. He was a great idealist, great footballer and truly a pio-neer of African footballers in Europe. That’s the end of this story. I wrote everything I could find about Eu-gene. Hope it was interesting for you to read and now you will know that besides modern African football stars, like Didier Drogba, or Samuel Eto’o, there was one bright football star from Cameroon 50 years ago. Always positive, always smiling and bringing huge joy to the fans.

9 | november 2012

The perils of social networking sites, in-cluding and in particular Twitter, have been proved time and time again. One of the most recent examples has seen Ash-ley Cole, the Chelsea and England left-back, call the FA a ‘bunch of t***s’ after his defence of his teammate in the Terry-Ferdinand saga was questioned. A swift and ‘remorseful’ apology left him able to be kept in the squad for the World Cup qualifier against San Marino but for a mo-ment his future in international football was looking doubtful. If a single tweet can potentially jeopardise a players interna-tional career, should football players still be allowed to have personal Twitter ac-counts. Twitter is the most immediate, direct and concise way for football play-ers, and celebrities of all kinds, to commu-nicate with their fans. But because of the simplicity of tweeting, it is more prone to embarrassing errors of judgement on behalf of the tweeters. Ashley Cole’s is by no means the first time a sportsperson has got themselves into hot water over a meagre 140 characters. Earlier this year, Rio Ferdinand (the brother of Anton who was involved in the Terry scandal) was fined by the FA for calling Cole a ‘choc-ice’, deemed a racially derogatory term, for defending Terry in his racial abuse case. There are countless stories of footballers across all leagues, high and low, taking to twitter to complain that they were on the bench that weekend. The Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton tweeted a couple of months ago the te-lemetry from his and his teammate’s cars, providing the world with information vi-tal to understanding how the team’s cars work. Not surprisingly, rival technicians could hardly contain their joy at such an unexpected present and the tweet was hastily deleted, though the picture re-mained online and questions were asked about Hamilton’s temperament and loy-alty to the team. With such a potential for disaster and disharmony, should footballers, and all other sportsmen and women, be al-lowed to have their own personal Twitter accounts, as opposed to websites and Fa-cebook pages which are usually overseen by someone else. As a result of the Ashley Cole incident, the FA is planning to bring in a code of conduct in relation to players behaviour. While players aren’t expected to physically sign an agreement to the code, it’s understood that by accepting a call up to the national squad, they accept the terms. The code of conduct, similar to those already in place for the England cricket and rugby teams, outlines and

reminds players of the behaviour expect-ed of them, whether they are with the national squad or not. It makes a specific reference to ‘discrimination’ and also out-lines the sanctions that could face players if they break the terms of the code (ban-ning from international duty is not said to be one of these sanctions). Although the FA says that the Code of Conduct has been in the process of drafting for a while now, it certainly seems more than coincidental that it is unveiled after an incident such as Cole’s. The advantage of footballers having personal Twitter accounts is ob-vious is often repeated when the debate comes up. It provides a relationship with the fans that has not existed since the days when footballers weren’t celebrities on thousands of pounds a week. Twit-ter has become the modern equivalent of the number 20 bus that the players may have taken to the ground on match days, allowing them to be frank and hon-est with the fans. It is clear, from the vast number of followers and tweets that top class footballers receive, that this kind of cyber-contact is greatly appreciated by supporters. The possibility of an incident on Twitter only adds to the attraction of players having accounts, in complete con-trast to the worry of their clubs, the fans love a bit of scandal. The footballers with the most fol-lowers are generally the ones who tweet the most (as well as the most famous) and ones who provoke a bit of controversy now and again with responses to their critics tweets - or ‘banter’. Especially with well-known journalists like Piers Mor-gan provoking players at every opportu-nity, the opportunity for some unsavoury comment to be made is huge. Generally though, players have learned from their, and their peers’, mistakes. Wayne Rooney is not likely to threaten to knock someone out for criticizing him as he has done, jok-ingly, on Twitter previously. Ashley Cole is certainly going to think twice before he tweets anything in anger again. But there is one way in which these events could have been easily pre-vented. If football clubs had seen the dangers of Twitter early on and put their foot down to stop players from creating personal accounts, these incidents could have been stopped and the game would have been ‘brought into disrepute’ on much less frequent occasions. Twitter as a community would not be any less of an interesting place without these football-ers and authorised accounts could still be used to inform fans of their clubs pro-gress. It is not unusual for clubs to control

the ways in which their employees com-municate with the wider public. Man-chester United is famously strict about how much their players are allowed to bask in the limelight with a reasonable amount of success. If clubs and FAs had been quicker in stopping players from taking to Twit-ter then these outbursts, some of which significantly affect the reputation of the game, would never have happened. It is thought that internet ‘trolls’ occur be-cause people feel safer and more confi-dent hiding behind a screen is a keyboard and the same is true of sports stars too. top class footballers rarely mix with the general public unsupervised and when they do they may think twice before open-ing their mouths to offer a foul-mouthed retort to a small provocation. Online, where they may feel detached from their status and more like an ordinary person, it’s a whole lot easier to say something you shouldn’t and be punished as a result. Having said that, the vast major-ity of footballers are actually, surprisingly, well-behaved on Twitter. While writing this article it was a struggle to think of in-cidents where footballers had disgraced themselves and their clubs with what they had said. Overall, the benefits for the fans and clubs of bringing players and sup-porters closer together hugely outweigh the possible negatives of an ill-thought tweet. Despite voicing his opinion of the FA in the manner that he did, Ashley Cole has, after apologising, been able to fit right back into the England squad and much of the ill-feeling towards him gener-ated from that tweet has disappeared. It’s helped to show that footballers are peo-ple too; with lives, feelings and families of their own. They even share some of the same problems - players such as Rio Fer-dinand (@rioferdy5) and Louis Saha (@louissaha08) often tweet about their kids and the school run showing the masses that they’re not that different from us af-ter all. I guess the answer to the question that is brought up any time a footballer tweets something vaguely contentious is - yes, of course footballers should be allowed their own twitter accounts. 140 characters is not enough to do any lasting damage to either their image or the sport; there may be a rocky period of a day or a week but the benefits last for months or years.

Mark ThompsonFollow me on Twitter

@mrthompson9

10 |

Th e per i ls o f s o c i a l

n etwo r k i n g s ites

people love to tweet. About everything.

Famous people also love to tweet about

everything what happens around them. in

some cases, that can lead to scandals...

photo | setantabetblog.com

www.fsmetta.lv

The most friendly football club in Latvia

Fs Metta

http://www.youtube.com/user/Copa90football

13 | november 2012

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photos | visit.pt

15 | november 2012

The successful story of the Dragons

In the modern era football mostly are domi-nating the TOP 5 leagues - English Premier League, German Bundesliga, Spanish La Liga, Italian Serie A and French Ligue 1. At least football fans all over the world mainly pay their attention and share interest around

these leagues in every season.

Imust say it is naturally - noone other league in the world can compete with these by following points - overall financial and commercial situation, av-erage level of the teams, popularity and mastership of the players, team success in the international areas and so on.

However, there are few teams in which are not less successful, only they play in the that called „second echelon” leagues. These are teams – icons for whole foot-ball world as well. And not many – Ajax Amsterdam from Dutch Eredivisie, Celtic Glasgow from Scottish Premier League and FC Porto from Portuguese Primeira Liga or in one word – Dragons. This story is about them – the only one such unique club which has reached its goal by limited resources. The club FC Porto was founded in 1893 by a wine merchant, António Nicolau de Almeida. FC Porto’s nick-name, “Dragões” (Dragons), as well as the name of their stadium, Estádio do Dragão (Dragon’s Stadium), is related to the club’s coat of arms. Until 1922 the club’s emblem was a blue football with the let-ters FCP in white. The Dragon The tradi-tional symbol and crest of the House of Braganza is a green dragon, representing Saint George, patron saint of Portugal. Be-cause of the use of the dragon in heraldry by the Braganza and Pedro IV’s link with Porto, a dragon was added to the old coat of arms of the municipality of Porto and is still a part of F.C. Porto’s coat of arms, who are nicknamed “the dragons”. FC Porto was one of the founding members of the Primeira Liga in 1933, and, together with Benfica and Sporting, it has never been relegated from the First Division (Primeira Divisão, in Portuguese) of Portuguese football. FC Porto was also one of the founding members of the dis-banded G-14, and is a member of the European Clubs Association (one of the founding members as well).

History of the Blues and Whites. F.C. Porto evolved its purposes to national and universal goals. In the first crest, the symbol was, of course, a football ball with the “F.C.P.” initials. Twenty years later the Oporto city shield becomes a vital part of the F.C. Porto badge. In 1948, the 3-2 vic-tory over Arsenal, at the time known as the best team in the world, was a proof of the blue and whites’ potential. Over the years, F.C. Porto grew as the conquests were becoming bigger and as its purpos-es were becoming greater. The symbol of a region astounded the country and sur-prised the world. The 1980’s were prob-ably the most memorable decade. When Pinto da Costa joined as president, FC Porto was the only club from the “Três Grandes” (The Big Three - the nickname of the three most successful sports clubs in Portugal). The football teams of Sport Lisboa e Benfica, Futebol Clube do Por-to and Sporting Clube de Portugal have a great rivalry, and are usually the main contenders for the title. They share all but two of the Portuguese Football Champi-onships ever played and generally end up sharing the top three positions. The only two clubs outside the big three to have won the Portuguese league are Belen-enses in the 1945-46 season and Boavista in the 2000-01 season) without European honours, but that quickly changed. Its first final in an international competition was played against Juventus for the 1983–84 European Cup Winners’ Cup, however FC Porto lost, in a match that became known for the bad refereeing of Adolf Prokop. In season 1986/1987, when team was led by Artur Jorge, F.C. Porto won its first

European honour in a thrilling 2–1 vic-tory over Bayern Munich in the Europe-an Cup 1986–87. The following season, when the coach was Tomislav Ivič, Porto won the European Super Cup against AFC Ajax, and the Intercontinental Cup against Peñarol, making it the first Portu-guese winners of either cup. The winning of these two cups was an outstanding deed, a proof of the success of a special approach to sports. Few years later, F.C. Porto achieved a goal that no other club in Portugal dared to accomplish. Five cham-pionships in a row was a remarkable act, another great page in the clubs’ history. The following 14 years (from 1988 to 2002) saw FC Porto as an average team – often in the final 16, but not pro-gressing much further. The exception was in 1994, when Porto reached the semi-fi-nals of the UEFA Champions League. The semi-final, decided on a single game, re-sulted in a heavy loss (3–0) at the hands of Johann Cruyff’s FC Barcelona at the Nou Camp. But next few years after the quite non-essential 2001/2002 season with just a Portuguese Supercup in the pocket, the lead of the team in January 2002 took legendary coach Jose Mour-inho - “The Special One”. He is memorable coach not only for the football world but the more for FC Porto fans. To describe his successes there is needed to devote to it a special part.

Antonio Nicolau de Almeida - founder of porto football club. he founded club in 1893.

achieve something as amazing as this Champions League win ever again. Porto after the golden times.Right after the victory in the UEFA Cham-pions League, most of the Porto’s fans understood – good times are close to the end. They understood the real situation, the principle how is set this spectacular, but in the same time cruel football world. Mourinho was packing his stuff. In Mour-inho’s time Porto’s summary was such - 2 European trophies in 2 years. An ex-citing young team. Unbeaten at home in the league for 2 years. After that, perhaps the club became the victim of their own fame and adulation. From the peak of be-ing UEFA Champions League winners, it all went downhill. Mourinho was lured away to Stamford Bridge with the prom-ise of millions to shape the Chelsea team his own way. With him went half the team that had started that Champions League final. Others also didn’t stay much longer. By 2005, everyone who had started that game had left the club, except keeper

once (and once runner-up) and the Por-tuguese SuperCup. Most importantly, it introduced us to a man who will go down in history so ne of the all-time managerial greats. A man who never played profes-sional footballer in his life, a man whose first major job in football was working as an interpretor for Bobby Robson at Sporting Lisbon, and a man who is now presiding over an 130-game unbeaten home record at Porto, Chelsea and Inter. Mourinho will be around for a long time yet, and his story as a manager is prob-ably only in its infancy, but he will never

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Jose Mourinho era – The Special One makes the club special. Almost six years on, it’s slightly difficult to describe what an incredible job Jose Mourinho did at Porto. Looking across this side and seeing names such as Deco, Ricardo Carvalho, Maniche and Costinha, the first reaction is to think, ‘Ah, it was a team packed full of good players’. But before Mourinho, these were mostly nobodies – either run-of-the-mill players in a decent Porto side, or players plucked from unfashionable clubs in the Liga Sagres – Nuno Valente was signed from Leiria, Paolo Ferreira from Vitoria de Setubal. There is no need to introduce you all with Jose Mourinho I guess. Even not very passionated football fans knows this man and knows why he is so special. The main thing which I wanted to know was – how he made it? How he made this fantastic and historical success with such club like FC Porto back then? Just in a few seasons? To answer to this question I tried to go for some answers. And seems I found them. Jose ‘‘The Special One’’ Mourinho wasn’t nearly as special when he took over as FC Porto’s manager in 2002. One could argue that Porto over-achieved un-der Mourinho, and whether that’s down to Mourinho’s own tactical acumen and man-management skills or the talents of the young (predominantly Portuguese) team is debatable. Nevertheless, they won the UEFA Cup in 2003 and subse-quently, reached the pinnacle of Europe-an club football in 2004 on a famous night in Gelsenkirchen, masterminded by the Portuguese playmaker Deco. They beat the likes of Manchester United on the way to the title courtesy of a last minute away goal. (How can any football fan for-get Mourinho famously running down the Old Trafford touchline following Costinha’s last-minute winner?). Mourinho and his team brought some really memorable moments for the Porto fans. Such mo-ments will be always remembered.

porto is a unique club with it's own and unique manner. porto is a good example of smart management.

Estadio do dragao was build back in 2003 and since then, it's a home of the dragons. beautiful stadium which always attracts a lot of spectators.photo | joao castro

But if we go back to the Mourinho, we can clearly see it was his tactical script. He was (and still is) a real genius. What was FC Porto before he was the coach of this team? This team was often painted as a defensive side, but in reality Mour-inho had a flexible approach, and the side would play in completely different ways for individual circumstances. In the quarter-final of the winning Champions League run, Porto trounced amuch fancier Lyon side 4-2 onaggregate in a tremendouslyopen two-legged tie. Then, inthe semi-final they producedthe most amazing display ofdefensive football imaginable,to run out 1-0 winners overtwo legs against Deportivo LaCoruna, with the winner com-ing from a penalty away at theRiazor, where Deportivo hadan incredible record. The finalagainst Monaco was a greatocassion for football – two unfancied sides with talented young managers do-ing battle in a wonderful new stadium. Monaco were unlucky in losing skipper Ludovic Giuly to injury, forcing them to change fro ma 4-3-3 to a 4-4-2, and this played into Porto’s hands, as they then dominated the central midfield area. Car-los Alberto’s snapshot came from nothing to put Porto 1-0 up, but in the second half they were incredible, sticking seven men rigidly in front of their keeper, and attack-ing only with three players at time. And twice they counter-attacked and scored, through Deco and Aleynichev. It would be clearly stupid to say that Porto’s suc-cess came just because of the luck, of op-ponent miseries or something else. It was Mourinho, The Special One, who started his bright career with this victory, in such way showing his talent. But Porto’s run was not just about the Champions League. Mourinho also won the UEFA Cup the previous sea-son, the league twice, the Portuguese Cup

17 | november 2012

18 |

Rolands JuhnaFollow me on Twitter

@rolandsj

Vitor Baia. Porto had become a selling club, scouting new Portuguese and South American talent and outsourcing them to the bigger clubs and the bigger leagues in Europe. Started to appear the exquisite reality. 4 coaches came and went in the 2 years following Mourinho’s departure. They won the league in 2006 but failed to even make it out of the group stages of the Champions League. An interesting fact is that, the team built to replace the UEFA Champions League winners of 2004 was equally talented, if not more. The 2006 team possessed the likes of Pepe, Diego, Anderson and Raul Meireles. The club cashed in on these talents too for sub-stantial transfer fees and recruited fur-ther talent from either its own academy or from South American clubs. 2006-2010 was a period of sta-bility under Jesualdo Ferreira. They won the league thrice and made a Quarterfinal appearance in the Champions League. Further talents were nurtured, the likes of Hulk and Lisandro Lopez. In 2009 ar-rived also Columbian striker, one of the best scorers in Spanish La Liga at present Radamel Falcao. And on June 2010 came Andre Villas – Boas, who was meant to be as a Mourinho’s successor. And partly he made it – in a season 2010/2011 Porto won the Europa League (former UEFA Cup) trophy. Villas – Boas, at that time 34 years old, became the youngest manager to lift the European trophy. His successful team had a unique South American fla-vour to it with players like Brazilian Hulk, Columbians Falcao and Fredy Guarin and Uruguayan full-backs Jorge Fucile and Al-varo Perreira. But history was to repeat itself. Like Jose Mourinho and his Euro-pean champions, the team was broken up that very year. Villas-Boas moved on to manage Chelsea, Falcao accepted a big money move to Atletico Madrid (where he won the Europa League again), Fucile went back to South America with Santos and Guarin went on-loan to Inter, with an option of a permanent signing. Reports indicate a very strong possibility of Hulk moving on to Chelsea this end-season. We can clearly make out a trend here. Despite being Portugal’s most suc-cessful club and being regular competi-tors in the Champions League, Porto has largely remained a selling club. With their strong South American scouting network and decent academy structure, they have preferred to outsource talent rather than build a nucleus of a team, under a coach with a long term vision for the club, to dominate domestically and be a force to reckon with in Europe. Of course, it is clear now that

Porto is not and won’t be club from the highest shelves. Simply it can’t concure with elite teams because of financial sit-uation. But still it stays one of the best European football clubs of all history, ac-cording to the titles won and real possi-bilities. And just few of many facts prove it:• FC Porto is the most success-ful Portuguese football club in terms of total titles, with 72 titles, ahead of Benfica, which has 69 titles and ahead of Sporting CP, which has 45 titles;

• It is the second most success-ful Portuguese football club in domes-tic competitions, with 65 titles, behind Benfica, which has 67 titles, and ahead of Sporting CP, which has 44 titles.

• Domestically, it holds the re-cord of five Primeira Liga titles in a row, having won the Primeira Liga 26 times.

• In the 2010–11 season, FC Por-to achieved the largest difference ever between champion and runners-up (21 points) in a 3 points per win sys-tem.

• FC Porto is an internationally lauded team, with a national record of seven international titles: the 1986–87 European Cup, the 1987 Intercontinen-tal Cup, the 1987 UEFA Super Cup (Por-tugal’s only UEFA Super Cup trophy), thus becoming one of a few teams in the world to hold in possession three major international titles simultane-ously and the only one in Portugal, the 2002–03 UEFA Cup (Portugal’s only UEFA Cup trophy), the 2003–04 UEFA Champions League (Portugal’s only UEFA Champions League trophy), the 2004 Intercontinental Cup (Portugal’s only Intercontinental Cup trophies) and the 2010–11 UEFA Europa League (Portugal’s only UEFA Europa League trophy).

These facts should tell you everything. Such clubs are legendary. They have lim-ited possibilities but still they never give up and they still can achieve the highest heights of European football. Despite eve-rything. And that’s why opponents always respect Portuguese club. Now I think you will agree, why FC Porto has such a spe-cial nickname – the Dragons...

19 | november 2012

photo | tumblr.com

20 |

tomary yellow card in quite a few games. For example, Man Utd 4 Wigan Athletic 0. Man of the match for that game in the 2012-2013 season, Scholes underlined his intent from the first whistle with a se-ries of crunching tackles throughout the progression of the first half. Even when United were coasting to victory at 3-0, there was a spell of Wigan pressure, bro-ken apart single handedly by Scholes by couple of continuous merciless tackles on the poor Jordi Gomez and James McArthy. You have to question, why did Scholes retire in the first place if he was still in this good shape and such good form. Besides the slight lack of pace, he has lost nearly none of the qualities that led him to be hailed as one of the great-est midfielders to ever grace the game. It was because the other up and coming players needed a chance. With Scholes in the first team, none of them would start a big game except in an injury crisis or in a cup game. The likes of Cleverley and Pog-ba needed more chances to impress and show that they could take on that mantle. Scholes obliged. Such is the character of this man that he sacrificed his own per-sonal gain that he could have had to help the only thing that he cares about - Man-chester United, a club he has been at since he was 14 years old. The match that signified every single aspect of Scholes game came this season against Tottenham. The first half was so poor on United’s part that they could have been beaten by a League One team. Scholes showed his frustrated side with mistimed challenges and not being able to link up play due to the congestion in midfield with the likes of Carrick, Giggs, Kagawa all being there around him. There was no space for him to pick that superb diagonal ball that completely destroys a defence or take the customary piledriver form the edge of the box. Things changed with the introduction of Wayne Rooney onto the pitch in place of Giggs. Rooney playing in a more advanced role and Ka-gawa moving to the left of the pitch freed

up ample space for Scholes to assert him-self on the game. United dominated that half to such an extent that they threat-ened to come back and win the game from Spurs despite being 2-0 down at half time. He completed over 130 passes, which represented a 90% + success rate. Tottenham were continually bombarded and only the heroics of Brad Friedel and William Gallas saved their day and de-livered a famous victory at Old Trafford. When asked to be the master of the mid-field and architect of all moves, there is simply none better than Scholes. He mar-shalled the midfield and made Totten-ham’s midfield duo of Moussa Dembele and Sandro, who were both exceptional other first half, seem redundant. With all respect to his teammate of 19 years Ryan Giggs, Scholes proved that age does not affect quality; he still is one of the best midfielders in the game. Scholes’ hard work and effort have not gone in vain. He is continually recognised by his peers and managers as one of the best players to work with and play against. Humility with such stardom is rare, but it is no big deal for Scholes, who has never been subject to the scan-dals usually associated with footballers. He is media shy and after he retired he did only one interview with MUTV. Prob-ably the greatest praise Scholes could receive is from another world class mid-fielder widely acknowledged as the best to have played the game. In February 2011, Barcelona midfielder Xavi rated Scholes as the best player in his position in the past two decades, stating “A role model. For me, and I really mean this, he’s the best central midfielder I’ve seen in the last 15, 20 years. He’s spectacular, he has it all, the last pass, goals, he’s strong, he doesn’t lose the ball, vision. If he’d been Spanish he might have been rated more highly. Players love him.” It is a testament to Scholes’ ability that even though he is in the twi-light of his career, United have not been able to find a replacement of his quality. Even Wayne Rooney, probably the face of United for the past 8 years and one of the best strikers in the EPL, is still only being touted as a possible replacement and not an able successor.

Nishant ReniwalFollow me on Twitter

@ nishant1995

There are only two of Fergie’s fledglings still left. At the end of Manchester Unit-ed’s historic 19th league triumph in the 2010-2011 season, speculation was high that one of them, Paul Scholes, would retire. It came as no shock when he and Edwin van der Sar decided to call it a day. United were thrust into the market and the likes of David De Gea and Phil Jones were bought as long term replacements. Six months later, Sir Alex turned to his trusted midfield general of 18 years to come out of retirement and help an in-jury-plagued team desperately short of midfielders. Nearly every top midfielder in the continent was linked with United and Ferguson’s judgement to bring back an ageing legend was questioned. Did Scholes repay his old gaffer’s faith? Even at 37 years old, that man Scholes managed to influence the team to an extent that three months into him be-ing back, United hadn’t dropped a single point in a game he started. And the match that they did lose, despite him starting - Manchester City winning at the Etihad thanks to Yaya Toure’s heroics. The one and only day that Scholes wasn’t at his imperious best, it cost United the title. It has been well documented how success-ful Paul Scholes and all others from the class of 92’ have been prior to retirement. But how good has Scholes been since he came out of it? A lot of fans say statistics lie; they believe that statistics do not show how good or influential a player is. Well even they can’t take anything away from Paul Scholes’ heroics. Averaging passes per game equivalent to the likes of Xavi and Iniesta in the English Premier League is no mean feat, especially given that some of his opponents in today’s game were just infants while he reached the final of the youth FA Cup. Points won by the team per game he started - nearly all. What sig-nifies this man’s character is that age has not deterred him from being the force he was in his prime - some might even say he still is in his prime. He still gets the cus-

old devilstrong devilthere are a special category of great football players . They never get any worse and age isn't a factor for them. Paul scholes is one of them.

21 | november 2012

photo | zimbio.com

22 |

Malaga is slowly turning not only into pack of wolves, but also into quite popu-lar trend in European football. Now al-most every football fan knows Malaga. And reason is good enough to follow their performances. Club from Andalucia is on way to success. I think that nobody expected such an impressive run at the beginning of 2012/2013 season. But they are on the right way. I remember the optimism about Malaga when Sheikh Abdullah Al Thani became the owner of club in 2010. And everything really looked good at the be-ginning. Management of club brought ex-perienced and well known manager Ma-nuel Pellegrini, there were some solid investments in youth academy of club. We didn’t saw any big transfers, despite Al Thani said the sky is limit for the budget of club. Malaga was slowly turned into a solid team. I mean, team, not a bunch of superstars or overpaid stars, who think that they are superstars. Smart moves outside and on pitch, not the smartest comments from owner. Maybe he just wanted to bring some attention to Mala-ga, maybe he simply thought that his club will become one of the leading in Spain after few years. But for Al Thani football was just a part of his plans in Spain. He was looking for some business opportu-nities in Costa del Sol region. And then he faced some problems with local au-thorities. There were some huge projects coming up near town of Marbella, popu-lar tourism destination in Costa del Sol. I remember that there were mentioned some really big numbers - around €400-500 millions. But there were came some problems and all plans were put on hold. While Sheikh was trying to fulfil his ambitions in business, Malaga was slowly becoming turning into one of the leading clubs in Spain. In summer of 2011, a lot of new players arrived to Mal-aga. Biggest signing was Santi Cazorla, The Anchovies paid €19 million for Span-ish international. There were also bought such players, as Martin Demichelis (€3M), Jeremy Toulalan (€10M), Na-cho Monreal (€6M), Joaquin Sanchez (€4M), Sergio Sanchez (€3M), Ruud van Nistelrooy (free transfer) and talent-ed midfielder Isco (€6M). That summer, Malaga spent total of €52 million. Solid money for solid players. But there was no overpaid footballers in squad. There was also talented Venezuelan striker Salomon

malaga has done a really impressive run at the start of this season.they are unbeaten in champions league and the anchovies are fullof hopes for a new surprises. You will ask - why i called them as a pack of wolves? you will find out that in this article .

available for Manuel Pellegrini. With such squad, there were some good reasons for optimism. Malaga looked simply an ad-equate and a bit pragmatic project. 2011/2012 was a breakthrough season for Malaga. Pellegrini had mo-ments, when he was under huge pres-sure from management and mass-media, but he always managed to keep team on track and bring back the needed consist-ency. In the end, Malaga finished 4th in La Liga and that was historical moment for club. It meant that they qualified for the Champions League qualification. It was impressive progress, if compared with 2010/2011 season, when Malaga fin-ished just 11th. Champions League was one of the main goals for Spanish club, but then there came first problems. After end of Euro 2012, leading player of Mala-ga - Santi Cazorla told to pressthat players haven’t been paidfor the last few months. Thatwas a huge announcement atthe end of successful season.Strangest thing about all thiswas the reaction of Al Thani.Cazorla asked for transfer toanother club, there was a lotof loud “reactions” from theSpanish press. No one couldreally understand the reasonfor such decline of the owner.Sheikh left just a short tweetin Twitter, which expressed some nega-tive feelings. Overall, that’s not a surprise that Al Thani was angry about everything happening in Spain. If in Malaga people were happy that their beloved club will have such investor, then local authorities of Marbella didn’t had so much respect for Sheikh. There were various rumours around this situation and one of them was really harsh for Malaga fans - press rumoured that Al Thani wants to sell club. At situation when club doesn’t gets any money from owner, there should be a real panic and there’s a real danger of bankruptcy, because no one wants to stay in a club, which is experiencing a cri-sis. Summer was full of sales and depar-tures. Legendary Dutchman van Nistel-rooy retired, leader of club Santi Cazorla was sold to Arsenal for just a €19 million. Another leading player, Salomon Rondon was sold to Rubin Kazan for just €10 mil-lion. There were also some minor sales and overall, Malaga earned just €32 mil-lion. That was at least something, but it

did their best to keep score. Malaga con-trolled the game well and had some mo-ments to score even more, but after final whistle, result was the same 2-0. Away game in Greece was more dramatic. For Malaga, this was a big ticket no matter how you look at this situation. Group stage of Champions League would mean some financial boost for club, which was really needed at that moment. For Panathinaikos, win also was needed. We all know how hard times Greek economy experiences now. So there was an active pressure from Panathinaikos. They need-ed some quick goal to bring some hopes for successful result. But it was hard task to do, because for Malaga there was no reason to panic and create problems for themselves. Thanks to experienced cen-tre backs Demichelis and Weligton, Mal-aga didn’t conceded any goals. Moment of hapiness and glory! Hard summer, full of problems and negative feelings didn’t broke the character of footballers, who remained in club.

still wasn’t enough to bring optimism to club. Even worse situation became, when rumours, about departure of Demichelis, Toulalan and Nacho Monreal, appeared. Already a departures of Cazorla and Ron-don brought some doubts about future of club. If those three would leave Malaga, that could be simply a catastrophe for club. Lucky for club, they stayed and con-tinued their preparation for Champions League debut. 22 august 2012, La Rosaleda Stadium, Spain. Malaga had their debut match in Champions League against Greek club Panathinaikos. Not the hardest and in same time, not the easiest opponent for crisis-weakened Malaga. Pellegrini gave place in starting line-up for just 16 years old Cameroonian striker Fabrice Olinga. He also appeared in starting line-up in away game in Athens. Malaga had really good start. In first half, they managed to score two goals (by Demichelis and Eliseu) and after half time, score was 2-0. Despite efforts from Panathinaikos, home team

we are experiencing the best period in thehistory of our club. wehave special emotionsat the moment.javier saviola, striker of malaga cf

23 | november 2012

As Malaga advanced to the group stage of Champions League, there was some chances to sign some extra players, other-wise team would have a very short bench. It wasn’t an easy task to find good players in such a short terms. Finally, there came first additions. On 28th August, just a few days before closing of transfer window, Malaga signed 28 years old Chilean mid-fielder Manuel Iturra, who previously played on loan in Spanish Segunda club Murcia. He joined Malaga as a free agent. Final day of transfer window was very hot for Malaga. They got agreement with Manchester City and 31 years old Para-guayan striker Roque Santa Cruz was once again going on loan, if last season he spent with Betis, this time he joined Mal-aga. Solid addition in situation, when club can’t afford to pay a lot for new players. Andalusian club also loaned 30 years old American centre back Oguchi Onyewu from Portuguese club Sporting. In my opinion, the most important signing was 30 years old Argentine striker Javier Saviola. He was signed as a free agent in last hours of transfer window. Saviola is really experienced and in his career, he has been part of River Plate, Barcelona, Sevilla, Real Madrid and Benfica. And he’s still a striker you should be aware of. Overall, Manuel Pellegrini now have a bunch of experienced players and some new talents. Squad is really inter-esting, because many footballers have seen almost everything in their careers and Malaga is a place, where they can bring some spectacular performance once again. Like a second chance, be-cause no one would blame team, if they would face failure in Spanish league or, especially, in Champions League. Even more, many were predicting a tragic end for Andalusian team. Reality turned to be much more optimistic. Malaga is having a solid run in La Liga, winning most of the matches and showing consistent perfor-mance. Now it’s clear that team is aiming for another season in Champions League. Recent success only gives more confi-dence and belief about brighter future. Left you can see schedule of Mal-aga in Champions League. If they would have such draw, for example, a season ago, then I would say that this is really tough group for them, but... Situation has changed a bit this season. Milan sold some of their leading players this summer, later some veterans left club and even acqui-sitions of players, like Bojan Krkič and Nigel de Jong can’t save the situation for Rossoneri. There are some new talents, like Stephane El Sharaawy. He’s team’s leading scorer at the moment, but prob-lem is that Sharaawy is too young and

unexperienced to bring needed effort for team results. And overall, there’s a lot of problems around Milan, so they are not a serious title or even play-off contender this season. Similar story goes with Rus-sian champion Zenit. They also have a lot of problems this season. Everything in club was fine, till the moment when club bought two well known names in Euro-pean football - Brazilian striker Hulk and Axel Witsel. More details about this story you can find in following pages, where my colleague Rolands explains all that tragi-comical situation with Zenit. 18 September 2012 became an important day in history of Malaga CF. They had debut match in group stage of Champions League. I didn’t expected a lot of surprises from Malaga. Their first op-ponent was Zenit, club with really good and experienced squad. Russians were ready to take three points away from Mal-aga, but they quickly faced hard reality. Malaguenos quickly took the game in their hands, scoring two early goals. 20 years old Spanish talent Isco opened the score already on third minute. Benalmadena born midfielder, became the main hero of this match. This was his evening. Isco not only scored two of three Malaga goals, but he also regularly launched dangerous attacks and created a lot of headache for Russian defenders. Zenit looked really confused, they weren’t ready for such an intense match. Malaga played with big-ger confidence and passion. Zenit showed some signs of “we-can-win-this-game-using-just-50-percent-of-our-potencial”. Not this time! I think that some of you can imagine, how glorious moment that was for Malaga. Debut, great football, great re-sult! What more can you ask from them? Next match was played in Bel-gium against local grand Anderlecht. Once it was a leading European club with some really bright footballers playing there. Now Anderlecht is a club which can play in Champions League and take away some points from favourites. But despite fact, that Belgians already played had against Milan on San Siro, Malaga was well prepared for this match. Bel-gians were keeping score equal till the last minutes of first half, when Portu-guese winger Eliseu opened the score. Malaga ended first half on a positive note and that helped them to continue match on a good tempo and pressure. On 57th minute, Joaquin converted penalty into a goal, but just a seven minutes later, once again there was scored goal by a Eliseu. End result 3-0 and another three, impor-tant points for The Anchovies. Man of the match, Eliseu said after match: “We have reached the first place and we shouldn’t

24 |

Cristian LiberumFollow me on Twitter

@Cristianliberum

stop on this achievement. We understand that patience and hard work can bring a real success for our team. We need to stay focused on our goals.” If Eliseu was the main hero in the match against Anderlecht, then match against Milan came was more success-ful for Spanish midfielder Joaquin, who scored only goal and brought victory for Malaga. He had not the luckiest moment, when there came his miss from a penalty spot, but later Joaquin took game into his hands and thanks to pass of Manuel Itur-ra, exonerated himself. Win wasn’t easy but end result was the most important. Milan can be weaker and more inconsist-ent than usual, but it’s still a Milan and such victory will remain as a bright mo-ment in history of Malaga. Soon there will be away match against Milan and stakes are only getting bigger. If Malaga can be almost sure about their place in play-off’s, then for Milan it’s be-or-not-to-be situa-tion. Zenit is just one point behind them and Russians won’t be satisfied with trip to Europa League. It won’t be loudly said, that Mal-aga has the best defence in the Europe at the moment. In all competitions, they are conceded only 5 (!!) goals. That’s an amazing result, because Malaga already has played more almost 15 matches this season. I think that it’s because of experi-ence and good chemistry between centre backs - Martin Demichelis and Weligton. They are looking really good together, rarely making mistakes and giving chanc-es to opponents. Spanish international Nacho Monreal and his teammate Jesus Gamez are also bringing some confidence to defensive line. Monreal has made some good progress this season. Interest around him is growing and even in sum-mer, he was linked with various European clubs. If he will continue this season on a high notes, I think next summer he could join some well-known club. It’s interesting and even a bit funny, that after a match against Milan, Malaga owner Al Thani gave some com-ments and said, that there will be some extra investments in club... Sounds funny, if we remember the situation in club at summer. But such comment shouldn’t surprise you a lot, because it’s logical that Al Thani now sees some potential in his club. Good performances in La Liga and Champions League can quickly change the attitude even of the most scepti-cal football fan. Popularity of Malaga is reached a new heights, but that’s still not a peak, in my opinion. I’m sure that Mal-aga will make their way into Champions League play-off round and there could be some new surprises coming up. And it’s

easy to predict, that everyone will wait for some surprises from Malaga. When a team steps on that “cinderella story” way, it always gives some extra excitement to follow and support them. I think many of you were hoping that APOEL surprise and get past their opponents in Champions League last season. Even if you see that there’s almost no chances for this team, you still believe in some miracle. And what’s the really positive moment, mira-cles happen! Almost every season there are some matches, which can be called astonishing. Same goes with Malaga. They will have their chance to shine and make many fans to support them. Now about the wolves... I will ex-plain you, why I see Malaga as the pack of wolves. First of all, this team is really hungry for success. Club overall is hungry, because you can’t predict actions of their owner. He can say a lot of positive things, but will there be real actions taken? No one knows. I understand some of his views on Spanish football, but Malaga is in need of support. I think that this squad with their manager, deserves some good bonuses. Because they are doing simply amazing job. We often see that wealthy clubs have to face failure. Sometimes, be-cause of mistakes of manager, sometimes because of footballers, who earn enor-mous money, but they feel to lazy to give their best every day. Malaga doesn’t suffer any lack of motivation. Not at all and I’m sure that they will feel some hunger all season long. That’s why they’re wolves. Maybe not so strong individually, but as a team, they are really dangerous for every opponent. That feeling of hunger keeps them focused on every practice, on every game. Everyone in team wants to achieve something. I really respect Manuel Pellegrini and work he has done this summer. He’s keeping the right attitude in minds of his footballers. Pellegrini has been praised and criticized in recent years, but Malaga is proof that he’s a top class manager. A real professional. When all that financial crisis story reached it’s darkest and low-est point, Pellegrini and many players had chance simply to leave club and look for new one. No doubt, that they would find a new jobs soon. But they stayed. They didn’t took the easiest step. Club started season without any clear vision, but with a clear aim - to fight for their place in Spanish football elite. Despite all odds. When Al Thani bought Andalusian club, he wanted to see Malaga as a top club in Spain. Equal to Barcelona and Real Ma-drid. It’s a really hard task. Pellegrini is working on that goal. Despite financial crisis, he’s moving forward and creating

a solid team. Sometimes there are just a some short-term stories of success. Mala-ga looks different. Biggest exams for Malaga are still coming up. Decisive matches in Champi-ons League, important and really hard matches in Spanish league against Bar-celona and Real Madrid. I hope that Mal-aga can bring some arguments in these matches. They did their best against rising Atletico Madrid, but still lost in a drama. Malaga needs to stay focused, because there’s a lot of teams, who can take away points and create problems for them. Both teams from Sevilla - Betis and Sevilla and also Valencia. These are the main opponents for Malaga in battle for a Champions League spot. I think it’s better to be a wolf, than a fish everyone is eating around. Who knows, maybe my idea will found some support and one day fans of Malaga will call their beloved team - a Wolves. Who knows. Anyway, Malaga is a strong trend of 2012/2013 season. If you love young and exciting teams - follow and support Malaga!

For manuel pellegrini malaga is a good chance to prove himself as a successful manager. photo | Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno/Getty Images

25 | november 2012

LanguageIn the countries, where football is on top, managers, directors, coaches and even fans look on things with a pragmatic view. First of all, they rate player abilities and technical skills - how good he is at the all main elements this game is demanding for, such as control of the ball, dribbling, passing, shooting etc. Secondly, they watch how this player's fill into the team, how they adapt

there. In one word - chemistry.

scandal in latvian footbal l

After these components are following characters and personal nature analysis for each player, for example, his attitude to the football and free time, how serious he is, and other things which are clearly con-nected to the football game. Would be stu-pid to rate football player by appearance, for example. Not a model type footballer with phenomenal skills – not needed? Rubbish. Same is with language knowl-edge in the highest level national teams of football. So many naturalized players nowadays play in the national teams that not all of them know this country’s lan-guage perfectly. But who cares? He plays good, is loyal to the team and other things goes secondary. Apparently, not in all countries. This is the story about Latvian national football team, in which one of its nominal leaders, German Bundesliga club Hamburger SV striker Artjoms Rudnevs, fell into disgrace by such an unfamiliar motive – he didn’t show his loyality to the language of the Latvia. At least mass media claimed it such. How it comes that suddenly player gets rated by his knowl-edge of the language and along with it even risks to get put in reserve squad? This all story started suddenly. One day right before the World Cup quali-fication game against Liechtenstein in all Latvian internet sport sites appeared Rudnevs comment, which caused big res-onance for all Latvian football fans and till this moment it is not completely clear,

Rudnevs was born in the second biggest city in Latvia called Daugavpils. Even now there are approx. 80% of Russian language speaking people. That’s why, even he has grown in Latvia, he doesn’t know Latvian language well, at least in such level that he could give an interview. Shamefully? Maybe. But from other side, he is not guilty that he grew up at such environment. Not always a person can choose how to live his life, it always must face with conditions from a side. But fans don’t understand it or don’t want to un-derstand. They seem to prefer perfectly speaking native language football player at a first place instead of big master with-out such speaking skills. After this article some part of them wanted Rudnevs to sit at bench or even more – leave the team. Comments were like this: „If he doesn’t respect our country, then just for me he can go away from national team at all!” Not even needed to mention that he was called a betrayer and non patriot of this country and so on... I would like to ask a counter question – if he is not a patriot of national team, would he still play for Latvia? I think not. Fans, of course, mostly are the ones who troll a lot, especially in Latvia. But that, what happened just few hours later, was not just an usual action. It was complete shock. On a response for what Rudnevs said to the press, a big part into this saga took captain of Latvian national football

did he say it exactly in such way or press-man just made some sentences up to get bigger popularity for himself. He ques-tioned Rudnevs for an interview and one of the questions was about his nonexist-ing knowledge of the Latvian language. In the article Rudnev’s answer was quoted following: “The knowledge of Latvian language? I don’t know it well. I can barely understand and read in it but not speak. Why I know at least some-thing? It is not a question to me. Proba-bly, because we are living in Latvia. Our main language in the country seems to be Latvian... How I think – I don’t need to know the Latvian language. With re-porters I can speak also in Russian. In Polish and English as well.” This text which came from Rud-nev’s mouth was a real atomic bomb between football fans. Even more I must say – the question of the language gets taken very painfully in Latvia, at least for latest years. It has its own explana-tion of course. Latvia was in the constitu-tion of USSR for several decades before. Therefore nowadays, if you come to visit Latvia, don’t be afraid if you don’t know Latvian language – Russian language has almost the same status considering how many people know it here. Also Russian speakers here are almost 35% from all population. In some cities, Russians are a majority. But it is demography and local politics, let’s get back to the football.

26 |

problems"The knowledge of Latvian language? I don't know it well. I can barely understand and read in it but not speak. Why I know at least something? It is not a question to me. Probably, because we are living in Latvia. Our main language in the country seems to be Latvian... How I think - I don't need to know the Latvian language. With reporters i can speak also in Russian. In Polish and English as well." famous comment of artjoms rudnevs.

Daugavpils is a city where Artjoms Rud-nevs were born. There’s just a 20% of Latvians living in this city, so that’s not a surprise that Rudnevs knows Latvian language not so good, as it should be. Latvia has a specific situation with all those language questions. It’s be-cause of politics.

team, English Premierleague side Read-ing FC defender Kaspars Gorkss. He wrote a letter to all Latvian fans and there was a lot of... in my opinion wrong talk. Now some translation from this letter:“After all what today has been spreaded out, for me personally has risen a question about motivation and argumentation – should all sportsmen of this country should be a real patriots... For some it is money, glory, but for others – patriotism and fight for own country, its flag!

More and more in the national teams are playing people from different ethnical origins and often appears actual ques-tion about singing of the national anthem and showing of respect. Can we ask these things from everyone?In my opinion – YES!

You have to show respect to your country, fans, coaches, teammates and LANGUAGE!

Going for the style, let’s say, making a spe-cific tattoo on your body or, when comes a chance, kiss countries flag – unfortunately, it is not enough to prove your respect and patriotism to your country.

Here comes a question about attitude and in my teammate’s case I think talk goes more about sanity and in some way lack of intelligence and incomprehensible bravado.

take a subtext under this letter. He claims himself as a patriot but at the same time he betrays and offends his teammate in public. Rudnevs started first? But he just said his own thoughts. Everyone of us is free and noone has rights to dispraise other, if his point of view is different. And one other thing – it is journalist’s fault that he started to ask him such ques-tions. He perfectly knew that it will become a real scandal as it has always been in Latvia when someone says something against native language, because lan-guage for Latvians is almost so saint as go to church and pray. And since Rudnevs always has been honest, journalist just wanted to gain his popularity... On such a negative basis. Secondly – what was Gorkss thinking when putting such response letter with a pa-triotic title: Open letter for Lat-vian fans! He mentions that team should rather prepare for the up-coming game (fortunately, Latvia won the game against Liechten-stein next day with 2:0) than solv-ing such problem questions but he just continues to make this problem even bigger. If he claims about foolishness from Rudnevs

Reading and hearing this day’s comments, unawares makes me think that spokesman is not a betrayer or smirch – he is graced with a foolishness. Same as all others, who living here in Latvia, haven’t seen it as needed to learn native lan-guage and seem to be proud of it.

I personally hope that he did not say this like it has been publiced. I hope, first of all, for his avail.

Unfortunately, for me as a cap-tain of national team of Latvia and a patriot of this country it is very sad and painfully that instead of preparation for to-morrow’s important game, we have to solve such questions, however, I think that at this time it would be wrong to stay silent and ignorant.”

I rewrited almost whole letter which wrote Gorkss. Impres-sive, good boy? I don’t think so. First of all, how can he, be-ing the captain of the national team, can say that his team-mate is stupid? He didn’t say it so straight but only idiot can’t

20%

27 | november 2012

footLanguage is un iversal

46%46% 80%20% 53%40%Riga is the capital city of Latvia (also the biggest one) and there’s al-most a 50/50 situation about Latvian and Russian speaking population. Riga is quite popular tourism destina-tion for English and Russian tourists, so Russian language is often needed if you want to find a job in Riga. Espe-cially, if that job is related to tourism and similar spheres.

In second biggest city of Latvia, Daugavpils, there’s a majority of Rus-sian speaking people. And such situa-tion has been almost always. Latvians always have been minority in Dau-gavpils. In beginning of 20th century, there was a lot of Jewish people living in Daugavpils. People from closest regions often came to this city to visit local markets.

Liepaja (nicknamed City where wind is born) is third largest city in Latvia. It’s a port and industrial city. Main industrial building in Liepaja is a metallurgical factory, which was founded more than a 100 years ago. This factory is a general sponsor for many local sports teams. If you visit Liepaja, you will hear Latvian lan-guage more often than Russian.

riga daugavpils liepaja

latvian speakersrussian speakers

62%

28 |

Rolands JuhnaFollow me on Twitter

@rolandsj

side, then with such letter, at least in my opinion, he showed himself even more stupid. What it changes for real – player knows the lyrics of the anthem, can speak fluently, can make expressive statements? But at the same time plays bad. Ok, in such Spain or Russia or other TOP foot-ball countries all players mostly plays great and knows native language very well. BUT... Everyone should remember what players are playing for Latvian na-tional team and how big chances and re-sources has Latvian team. They are very little. And every good football player, who has passport of Latvia, can really help this team to achieve something more than win over Liechtenstein. And who cares, if he can say few sentences or say a lot more? Main thing is what he is doing on the pitch. But almost noone in Latvia agrees. Maybe that’s why national team plays so bad lately and has dropped out of the TOP 100 in FIFA ranking, reaching their low-est position of all history. One more thing. Rudnevs is showing better and better performance in Bundesliga. He has started to score goals and give passes. In Latvian national team he has not got a chance even for real goal scoring. So bad is the squad of this team. But no matter that all are worried that he and some few other players can’t speak Latvian... So I want to ask for you, dear reader of this article. Is such situation in your country common? Is it very impor-tant for you and other your country’s fans that some player, not pure-blooded na-tive human can sing an anthem and say a lot to mass media in native language? Or I will re ask the question – are football

skills and potential of the player less important than his knowledge of the language? Even more – if your national team has real lack of good players and has hardnesses to compete good against many teams?Don’t understand me wrong. I do not support people, who don’t know their native language, especially, if they have lived long in that country. But in this case, when all get furious about language knowledge and completely forget about skills and performance on the football pitch, it makes this situation comic and stupid. It goes under the slogan: we don’t care about results, unless perfectly speak-ing patriots are running on the pitch and playing for this team!Yeah, almost forgot – few days later Rud-news made an official statement with apology. As usual sportsmen are doing it, mentioning reasons why they said that and that so fast and being reckless. Rudnevs, of course, did it just because he doesn’t want any problems and strained relations with fans in future, simply be-cause he wants to play for Latvian na-tional team. So he went a step back, go-ing over own style and losing some part of self respect just because of fans. But do they deserve such a player, if they are ready to eat him alive when he says his honest thoughts? That’s the question which still remains with an answer.

ballLanguage is un iversal

Discussions about languages are very popular in Latvia. Especially, on political stage. Many local parties are trying to discuss these questions to raise their popularity and ratings. And as we see, some journalists also are trying to create a sensations from all these discussions and related comments from well known people in Latvia.

35%

latvia

29 | november 2012

30 |

Already a last season, Betis were showing signs of interesting football that can bring some good results. Pepe Mel helped Betis to make their comeback to Spanish elite and main goal was to keep their place in Primera. Mel and his team succeeded. Be-tis finished on 13th place, not so far away from Levante, which qualified for Europa League competition. Solid season individ-ually had experienced striker Ruben Cas-tro, who scored 16 goals in La Liga and was 8th best scorer in league. Quite im-pressive, if we look at the other strikers. Messi, Ronaldo, Falcao, Benzema... Such players don’t need any comments. Recently, Betis had important victory over Valencia. Match ended with a result 1-0 and Betis showed some prag-matic football that day. I remember that last season there were moments when Betis played some really exciting mo-ments, but it sometimes brought more problems, than a positive moments. They played a brave football. Interesting to watch, but if we look long term, it’s hard to win everyone only on enthusiasm and risk. This season, Betis looks more calm and pragmatic. Seems that Pepe Mel has trying to calm down his team and bring some smart style of play. Maybe it will be less entertaining but results should be better. Match with Valencia proved that. I hope that Ruben Castro will re-main healthy throughout the season. He’s a really important figure for Betis. Despite fact that he’s already 31 years old, Castro doesn’t lose any of his qualities. Even more, I think he’s now at the peak point in his career, because for many years he was loaned to various Spanish clubs, but since joining Betis, Castro has become a regu-lar starter and evolved into a leader. He’s really quick and for defenders it’s not the easiest task to stop him. And what’s even more interesting, Betis in January signed very similar striker to Castro, 21 years old Portuguese Salvador Agra, who previ-ously played in Olhanense. He’s also quite short (1.66m) but very quick and techni-cally gifted. Maybe there will be another Ruben Castro coming up for the Betis in next few seasons. There’s some potential.

November will be really tough for Betis and I think we will find out soon - are they able to surprise us this season? Be-cause there will be El derbi Sevillano on 18 November. Those derbies are the most important matches of the season. I think those who follow Primera, know the im-portance of these meetings. If Betis will be able to get some points against Sevilla, that would be a good step forward. Week later, Betis will have some really fancy guests from the capital - Real Madrid. That looks an even more tough opponent to play against. Despite fact, that Real is having some problems in Primera, they will be looking for victory. Jose Mourinho and his team can’t afford to lose points, because Barcelona is play-ing quite well and they don’t lose points at all. I think match against Real will show the ability of Betis to play a pragmatic and smart football, because there’s no need to play brave football against Los Blancos. They can quickly punish Betis for being overly brave. Patience and discipline will matter. Pepe Mel also can try to bring some success for Betis in Copa del Rey. Looking at the potential opponents... Well, I think Betis could reach 1/4 final, because opponents aren’t the strong-est ones. In 1/4 final, there could be a meeting against Athletico Madrid... They play really good football this season. But anyway, cup could be the chance to shine, because biggest threat (Real and Barce-lona) theoretically can come up only if Betis reach final. And if they do so, that’s a guaranteed place in European competi-tions even if they lose it. Well, that’s how I’m imagining all that story of success. Betis need to stay calm and focused, I see that Pepe Mel is making some little, but important steps forward. Resources are limited, so everyone should be prepared for a tough season. Good luck for Betis in El derbi Sevillano!

Cristian LiberumFollow me on Twitter

@Cristianliberum

solid start for betisReal betis has made a solid run in beginning of 2012/2013 season. After nine rounds, they are on fifth place in la liga table. can betis surprise everyone and finish season in top six, qualifying

for the european competitions?

we can mark some line between football on and off the stadium. And it is clear that things which happen on the pitch bring mostly happiness. If game ends in a draw, then in more than 50% occasions teams are happy – at least they get 1 point from this game, which is not a little in mod-ern football when all teams are becom-ing stronger and the same fluctuations

31 | november 2012

market is always entertaining, same as commentaries from Jose Mourinho after his team has lost a game, which could be described even as hilarious. But it is just the smallest part of the happiness. Life for football players, when they are not doing the job of kicking the ball for 90 minutes for which they suffer a lot, is not as easy. Sometimes it is even cruel. This time – a short preview about the all negative stuff connected with the Russian football in this season.Hulk and Denisov – from a success to the dump? Would be stupid to say that

of 1 point can make you a champion or relegate out of the highest league. If one team wins, then its fans are more hap-pier than the other – loser team’s fans. If referee made several rough mistakes – not good, may grow to scandal but still it is not so bad, because you always hope that such will never happen again. Same as if player gets horrific injury. There al-ways stays hope he will get back on line healthy. This is what is happening on the pitch. But how about life outside of the pitch? Mostly there happen a lot of bad and negative things. Of course, transfer

what the

photo | esporte.uol.com.br

football, like any other kind of sport, often is full of surprises. Not only because of actions on the pitch but also outside of it. It is totally unpredictable. But here

32 |

Russia as a country is very attractive for most of the people, at least Europeans. Usually it is clearly opposite. Already from Soviet times many other European country inhabitants try to avoid it more and more. Nowadays situation is bit bet-ter but not good either. For many nations this thought about Russia as a place where only alcoholics are walking by the streets with a bottle of vodka in hands and usual pedestrians might be the wildest serial killers or wicked thieves is still alive. Of course, those are stereotypes. But as we know, nothing can arise from

Zenit Saint Petersburg. This is one of the most known teams in Russian football. Competitors, if looking back to the his-torical achievements, are not much. They all are teams from Moscow – CSKA, Spar-tak, Dynamo. Zenit lately regularly plays in the UEFA Champions League. Without any secret – team has very big financial resources thanks to their main sponsor – largest extractor of natural gas, one of the biggest companies in the world Gazprom. Team year by year made a complicated squad selection job, taking only quite sure and stable foreign players, putting

nothing. Same about football. A lot of in-cidents happened before some time in Russian football. Lately it seemed to be the most positive thing there – football became less politics and scandals, it was all about to sports. With Samuel’s Eto’O appearance at the squad of Anzhi from Makhachkala and following team’s sign-ings with Guus Hiddink in front let some hope that Russian football is now going to the right way. And it is truth. Team level is slowly getting higher, players progress a lot. But seems that mentality can’t be changed though.

f**K? v 2.0

33 | november 2012

the most important player basis still on the local ones, footballers who play in the Russian national team. The one and only obstacle has been same which I described earlier. The common people (in this case also football player) attitude to Russia as a a country. Local players will always prefer to play at home – it is naturally, logically and why not, if gameplay level is high and you can earn also good wage? But with foreign players situation is clearly differ-ent. They see a lot of minuses for joining some Russian football team – overall level of living in Russia makes them scepti-cal, conditions out of the pitch worried but such thing like walking at night by the streets of some old city – it becomes dangerous. And same about fans – many black-skinned players refuse the pro-posals from Russian clubs just because of previous incidents connected with threats of racism. This summer seemed to be an ex-ception. Whole European football world was shocked when Zenit announced about two loud signings, both ex Porto players – young Belgian talent Axel Wit-sel and Brazilian terminator Hulk. Overall sum of the signing of these two was very high. Everything seemed just wonderful from this point. Two potential leaders in the team, and if before one year Zenit already managed to reach ¼ final in the UEFA Champions League competition, then now, when Witsel and Hulk is on the line... But seems not. As it always happens – you want things to make better but they get just worse. Zenit bosses wanted to build up a team which would be unbeaten but team’s midfield player Igor Denisov had different thoughts.

When Hulk started to train with the team, fans awaited that now Zenit will play re-ally good. Everyone expected just wins, especially in Russian Premier league. But suddenly Zenit started to lose games, lost to those teams, which they have to win by every conditions. It said there is some-thing totally wrong. Initiator of this was Denisov, who right after Hulk’s and Wit-sel’s filling in the team started to act like a kid. The 28-year-old midfielder asked for a pay rise after the capture of the Brazil and Belgium internationals, but was de-moted to the reserves rather than get the improved deal he was after, much to Den-isov’s dismay. “Why would foreigners earn three times more than the best players in the team? That’s why I asked for a pay rise. But I was axed by the coach instead. If Hulk and Witsel were at the same level as Messi and Ronaldo it would be fine, but they are not. So why do we have this imbalance in wages then? It’s not about money, it’s about respect. I couldn’t even sleep well a few nights in a row waiting for the club’s decision. Why do people say we don’t pass the ball to Hulk too often? We do. We didn’t give a warm welcome to him upon his ar-rival? We did. But it’s hard to communicate with him and Witsel through interpreters. They are supposed to try talking to us themselves.” Denisov then went on to stress that there’s no truth in the reports sug-gesting that the Zenit squad is deliber-ately making life difficult for their new players. And clearly he ruined all micro climate in the team. Yes, he was sent to the reserve team because of these insults and illogical statements (you can put an

accent on the parts of sentences I high-lighted) but he made it – by his reaction went followings from other teammates, Russians. Hulk wanted to talk with them through interpreter but they didn’t want to. For example, former Sevilla striker Al-exander Kerzhakov supported Denisov’s criticism and refused to train and play. He was subsequently relegated to the re-serve team as well. Hulk earns more than €5 million a year and is among the top 30 best-paid players in the world. New sign-ing Axel Witsel is said to earn just under half Hulk’s salary. According to the Rus-sian press, Kerzhakov and Denisov have the backing of their well-considered teammates at the club - Vyacheslav Mala-feev, Aleksandr Anyukov and Vladimir Bystrov. So, how it comes that if new play-er joins the team, just without any mean thoughts, he gets put under the bullets? Some media sources even reported that during one training Hulk had a collision with other team’s players – Russians, who went for the support to their mate Denisov. But who is guilty after all? I will never understand such players like Den-isov and others, who are on his side. Want more money? Then train harder ever and you will get a chance to play in some Eu-ropean superclub. But without all that Denisov already earned several millions in a season. Not enough? Funny that be-fore Hulk and Witsel arriving everything was fine, now suddenly he keeps talk about some respect and fairness of situ-ation. Where? Is he nightmaring? Seems so. Also Denisov hasn’t made an apology yet, which says what kind a person he is – just egoistic and arrogant bastard. No matter how will this situation end, it doesn’t say anything good about Rus-sian football. Who will ever want to join Zenit after this? I mean such level player like Hulk? I think noone, everyone will realize how jealous and envious people are playing there and will reject even big money. Even same Hulk I think now feels

image of russianleague has beendamage d. . .

34 |

greed of denisov,fans of dynamo

oh, shame ...after this public scandal, a group of dis-gruntled Dynamo Moscow fans, dressed in camouflage, showed up at the club’s training ground and fired a volley of paintballs at players and coaches. They also threw leaflets on to the pitch warn-ing that there would be further direct ac-tion if results do not improve. One of the flyers read: „If the club and the coaches can’t motivate you, then believe us, we will do it. And our methods will be a little more serious.” The fans scattered leaflets ex-horting Dynamo’s foreign contingent of German striker Kevin Kuranyi, Australian international Luke Wilkshire, Hungarian Balazs Dzsudzsak and Ecuadorian Cris-tian Noboa to improve their play or “pay the consequences.” Dynamo midfielder Alan Gatagov was left shocked by the attack. „What should we do? Should each of us hire a per-sonal bodyguard? I was hit in the back of the head when they shot at us, lots of play-ers were hit,” he said. „I didn’t even real-ise what they were shooting with, perhaps paintballs, they were in camouflage and fled pretty quickly. It was vile.” Dynamo subsequently issued a statement condemning the action and promising to respond in the ‘toughest possible manner’ the law allows them to. The official supporters club also criti-cised the attack and vowed to help the po-lice track down the culprits. Dynamo’s president Gennady Solovyov was really, really angry. The ex-KGB general has vowed to “pun-ish” the perpetrators: “I have no other words to describe those who could do such things. I promise I’ll do my best to try

to find and punish those responsible for these actions.” This situation is overall sad for Russian football. The more such incidents will happen, the harder will be to moti-vate high class foreign players to join Rus-sian Premierleague clubs. Simply noone will want to risk with their lives. Not all ask just for money and good conditions for living. Everyone wants to feel safe, without any signs of endangerment. And it is naturally for every person. Sad that such situations appear more and more nowadays and people become too aggres-sive. For example, before many decades such situations never happened, at least in Russian football. Threat players to kill them? It was too much just, no matter re-sults. Some players, for example legend-ary Russian goalkeeper Lev Yashin got a lot of respect from fans no matter bad games, that they accompanied him to the bus station and back. Something similar is hard to imagine nowadays. And very sad that this human race evil and tendencies on violent ac-tions just raise and raise and you can’t stop them. Maybe such people once after all will ruin the Earth and therefore will come the end of the World? Might be. An-yway, situation is of human relationships and attitude to some actions is getting worse. I hope only that you, reader of this article, will stay positive no matter what. To survive, we need just positive people. Then there will be a lot loses and less neg-ative around. Hopefully.

to regret this move. Yes, level is good but sense of it if team lost several games in the UEFA Champions League and is under the question if it will make it through the group stage? Then it will be total failure. Now it proves clearly that in big collec-tive it is fully enough with a one person to ruin all spirit and mood there. It is sad. Watch out! Every new loss makes you closer death! If saga around Hulk and Denisov is quite rare but it hap-pens, then this story is clear nonsense. The main subject is another Russian foot-ball club Dynamo Moscow. The club lost eight of their opening 11 Russian Premier League fixtures and standed at fourth place from bottom of the table. In such hard periods usually teams get their sup-port from a group of people, which will always love this club no matter it situa-tion – fans. The only one people, who al-ways believe in the team and hope it will finally start to win. Well, this was not in Dynamo’s case. First incident happened when team had an official meeting with fans. And how you think what was its content? In normal situations fans would say some motivated words to make the team start to play better and gain some fighting spirit in it. But such are not Dy-namo Moscow’s fans. Fans in radical form demanded for the players not to appear with satisfied smiling face expressions in trade centres after loses in games and an-nounced they will not allow for the play-ers to party at night clubs. Also in a very rude manner they promised for the play-ers to use a violent power in case such losing streak continues. Right after they said this, they all left the team’s training ground and was gone. It explained all, player faces were like in total misunder-standing. How, how can such come from our fans? They clearly wasn’t ready for such and actually, sad that they listened a lot to these persons with undeveloped minds what they say. And, as it was clear later, those were not just a words. After a bit more than 3 weeks

Rolands JuhnaFollow me on Twitter

@rolandsj

35 | november 2012

photo | saturdayatthree.wordpress.com

36 |

was that a right move?

I woulnd't be surprised, if hulk would have a such question for him-self after all that scandal in zenit. Lucky for russian club, hulk is a professional, who gives all the best he can in every match. I hope that brazilian will have success despite all odds...

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39 | november 2012

200th goalrussian striker aleksandr kerzhakov scored his 200th goal in his careerin a champions league match against anderlecht. Kerzhakov is one of the best strikers in the history of russian football. Most of goals he has scored for his current club, Zenit saint petersburg . Kerzhakov is also one of the leading scorers in history of russia national team.

photos | sovietstar.net

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birthday!!!legendary arsenal manager, frenchman arsene wenger celebrated his 63rd birthday on october 22. unfortunately, his team wasn't able to make a present to their manager on his birthday. arsenal had some streak of unsuccessful matches, but that streak didn't lasted for long. Recently, arsenal has won last few matches.

photos | tumblr.com

41 | november 2012

comeback!simply an amazing match was played between Reading and arsenal in the league cup 1/8 match. arsenal made a stunning comeback! reading had the 4-0 lead after first 30 minutes! Arsenal managed to recover and make an amazing comeback. They equalised game in last seconds of regular time and in extra time, arsenal got victory! final score 7-5! Epic match!

photos | tumblr.com

42 |

birthday!!!arsene wenger wasn't the only man, who had his birthday. legendary diegomaradona celebrated his 52th birthday! maradona is probably one of thegreatest footballers ever. maybe even the best ever. now maradona is on his way to success in managerial career. No matter what will be result of his job as a manager, in argentina he will always remain as a national her0.

photos | tumblr.com

BATE ! Bate ! ! !belorussian club bate borisov had some amazing moments in champions league matches against lille and bayern munich. Especially, against the german grand. both matches ended with a successful result for bate 3-1. Unfortunately, in third match of the group stage, bate had to face a loss against valencia. but they still have chances!

photos | tumblr.com

43 | november 2012

44 |

referees...there was a lot of criticism about referees in english premier league. The hottest discussions were after chelsea and manchester united match. that night was a full of various mistakes from referee mark clattenburg and his two assistants. chelsea lost that match 2-3 and referees gave a lot of bad reasons for discussions ...

photos | tumblr.com

44 |

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