Any Spartak fans out there?

Okay, fair point. I will admit that did Dinamo indeed "steal" other players - for a better word.

But to be honest, when you look at the Spartak brand, it is pretty impressive. Hockey, basketball, tennis.....

That I can't dismiss. Its just a shame that many other Sporting clubs have took ages to become established in Moscow.

I will hold my opinion and you can hold yours. That is what life is about. Everybody can't agree on everything.

As for SpartakM, sorry I have spoiled your lovely thread - what must you think of me?

 

I'm actually 20, mate.

Saw Loko by chance rather than simply picking a team at random. My first ever Russian team I saw play. So my Russian football knowledge is not as immense as other. I then started to follow the team and have become a fan.

I've only been to one game this season, and the fact that I live some 8,000 miles away surely counts as impressive. At least we are in agreement about one thing......I too hate CSKA.

 

Geez, this sounds so much like my reason to root for Loko, it's scary.
Of course, my experience predates yours by 13 years and Loko at the time was a piece of FD mediocrity.
Still, you gotta figure that there are only three types of Loko fans:

1) Some goofballs who for whatever reason never took a liking to the Big Four (maybe, a thousand or so, including some unusually-loyal railroad workers and/or Cherkizovo natives)
2) People like you and me (you and me)
3) Bandwaggoners who escaped the sinking Spartak ship (about 99% of the current fanbase).

I don't know, I kinda like this kind of a setup.

 

1.) I would say every Loko fan is this. But what happens when we become a "big" team? Right now, we are doing miles beter than Dinamo and Spartak.

2.) mmmm. Yeah, we are a dying species. My love affair with Loko started as a silly teenage romp, but ended in a full on romance.

3.) Or as one journalist wrote, "Loko - a place where the homeless fans can dry off...."

 

Woo-hoo, make that another Spartak fan. My mate tells me, this thread's walked down the dangerous path of comparing DK and SM...

 

Okay, I will admit now that leaving openings for Spartak fans is a dangerous business. If it gets out of control, not even a subforum will sustain them.

 

Spartak were the first independent sports society and functioned as a "sports club", not a subsidiary of a power structure. In fact, Spartak's continuous p*ss-taking at the expense of Beria's Dinamo landed the founding brothers in the camps for a dozen years, yet the society continued to function and later the team provided the backbone for the only Soviet sides to ever win anything - 1956 & 1960. But most of important of all, the team maintained the tradition of playing football. No matter how difficult the situation (relegation mid-1970s) the team continued playing football as opposed to resorting to athletics - the flair approach as opposed to the bulldosing physical one of the Dynamo sides.

 

Khhhmm...errrrrmmm....
Let us see Dmitri Alenichev won the UEFA Cup and the Champions' Cup in successive years, scoring in both finals, in open play...

 

Didn't the bloke who formed Spartak spend a decade in the camps for "the promotion of bourgeois sport"?

Anyway, what sort of a side spends six million quid on a classy young striker only to leave him on the bench? Isanity.

 

I could argue Netto for Spartak in terms of influence. Unfortunately, Fedor overplayed early on and was too injury-prone afterwards but in terms of sheer elegance and beauty in the centre of the park, DK have no equivalent.

 

"I'll tell you what is pretty. Winning is pretty."

Gerard Houllier

 

All right there, la'. Read what I've written above - the 4 founding brothers and 2 of the players were arrested in 1942.

Unfortunately, Spartak has now become yet another machine for money laundering. The previous fellows - Cherevichenko and Shikunov - were nothing more than small-time provincial bandits. They ran the club into the ground as they were simply quite thick when it came to football. The new guy took over on 1 July and has been "using" the Lukoil money quite a bit - hence Cavenaghi, who's been voted one of the biggest disappointments of the season. I am beginning to suspect more and more that Cavenaghi has not been brought in to play but to mess around with the cash involved with his wages and transfer. He did score a cracker a couple of weeks ago to win a match but his general fitness has left people somewhat bemused. Would be surprised if he is back in spring.

 

That is true but Spartak were able to win prettily. Teams go through their purple patches. Dynamo's was 70s-80s. But Spartak were back into their own by mid-1980s. And they won prettily.

 

People do know Alenichev now. And randomly a lot of people in England at least used to know Onopko.

 

Servus, mate

So Cavenaghi was bought just to put some dodgy money through the wash? What a waste. He was class at River. What is wrong with his fitness? Do they not train at Spartak?

 

Ah, but they're awash with mediocrity now, though, are they not? They have been overtaken and left behind by CSKA. Maybe hiring Gazzaev as coach would help them Dynamo are still successful today, but I can't see Spartak setting any competitions alight.

 

Him, Kanchelskis of course, and the seemingly inseperable Kulkov and Yuran from the nineties. There was also Protasov, Milkhailichenko, Litovchenko and Rats from the eighties.

 

Lobanovski did like his "total football" and in terms of physical aaspect of the game was very much ahead of his time but no way was the football as elegant as Spartak's.

What is "Soviet soccer"? What style of play is that then?

Accompilshments of Soviet Soccer were first noted in 1956, 1960, 1964, 1966 - who were Dynamo then? Selective memory, sunshine...

 

Teams go through crises. Spartak have been at the top for 20 years before the crisis. These things happen. DK have hardly set Europe alight with their recent performances and as for being at the top of Ukrainian league, playing in front of one man and his dog... give me a break.

 

Too much pathos...

 

You could say they were behind the league - after all, who played the match in the Red Square that Stalin enjoyed so much?

 

You can only play in the league you're in. It's not their fault that the Ukrainian league is poor. The Russian league is also poor but Spartak are way off the pace in that.