Don't worry, the moment Loko win it, I'll spam this board with pictures of them holding it aloft......
Thanks, I writing a history of Spartak Moscow in the Championship Manager game and I win the league. I need the pictures to put in my history.
Thats nice, but I think you'll need a 'bit' more space if you were to make an image with Spartak trophies.
Lokomotiv is an accomplished football club. Spartak is an institution. Displaying its trophies doesn't even begin to tell the story of what this team means for Russian football. Hey, I am happy with what I got and I respect what I don't have.
Spartak are a past force. This time we will finally see and in some respects have seen the other bride maids of Russian soccer come to the fore. CSKA and Loko were always the "almost" teams in the RPL. Now they are the kings. Damn even outside the capital we have seen Rubin Kazin suprise everyone last year and now Samara. Quite frankly the idea that Chervichenko can buy his beliefs into the rest of Russia that Spartak are the force they were is complete *****. He can fvck himself for all I care. It makes me laugh because they are the Russian equivalent of Man U. I couldn't care less about Spartak and their arrogant fans. The only good thing to come out of Spartak is the multitude of tennis players from the club of the same name. And they will win more trophies than Spartak ever will in the next century.
That is your right, though of course the current hike in Loko fan activity can be traced straight back to the mass defection of the Spartak bandwagonners. Basically, there are plenty of arseholes supporting all Russian clubs, including even Druzhba Maykop. But without Spartak we would never have Russian club football as we know it and they, more than any other side, represent the country's footballing history. For better or for worse. Loko are the only Russian team to have never finished outside the top 6. Considering that we were "the fifth wheel in the Moscow football wagon" throughout the Soviet history, the turnaround is indeed remarkable. As for Syomin, he started in 1986 and is undoubtedly the second most important person in club history after Lazar Kaganovich. Though, the Ministry of Transportation's deep, deep pockets had obviously much to do with the successes.
When you are looking for Jews who've influenced Russian football, you'll take anything you are given. Giner, Romo and Rappoport and other New Yids nonwithstanding, our impact on the trials and tribulations of the spotted ball in the Cold Country are few and far between. Stalin's Train Czar founded Loko all those years ago and, considering who was Dinamo's daddy, it probably could've been worse.
Took a class a year and a half ago with a girl who's dad played for Dynamo, back in the day, actually. Interesting conicidence. True, but the association with dear Lazar isn't one I'd want. Not a "pleasant" man.
Eh, people drive Fords and Volkswagens. There must be something about transportation that attracts monsters... Definitely, a head-scratcher. Zenit used to have a player named Levin-Kogan. Like only one of those wouldn't have been more than enough.
Some of my family had the misfortune to be more involved in the Soviet government/bureaucracy than they'd have preferred. Lazar's name was not exactly liked around the dinner table.
Don't worry, few people nowdays have the slightests idea who founded the Mighty Red-Green Steam Train. What, given the fact that the average age of a surviving Loko fan is about 18. For all intents and purposes, the Parovoz was founded by Syomin in 1986, with the eternally bag-eyed Gladilin giving his unsteady leadership by the power of his venomous breath and a crookedly affixed captain's armband to the First League outfit in faded red Adidas kits, sans logos and corporate sponsorships.
Oh, I'm in no way biased towards Loko because they were founded by Lazar. Just that the name caught my eye. That sort of thing doesn't matter to me. I don't hate Roma because they were Benito's team - I hate them because they're Roma. When I was very young I formed an odd attachment to Dynamo, but when I left in 89..............I put away childish things, so to speak. Aside from an occasional "nice to see a former Dynamo player playing well" comment, I ignore them.
You two remind of the archetypal Soviet expats. "oy......in the old country......" I truely deplor Spartak - I can't stand them. Don't get me wrong, I wish them all the best of success - In the first divison. Supported Loko due to pity than anything else. No bugger in the capital used to support them until the ministry bulldozed the old stadium and stuck up the eye-sore that is our ground. To be truthful though - name me one Russian team that hasn't got roots in the CCCP. And those are usually by all factions of society, of which all of them are corrupt as hell. Milita, KGB, transport, Miners and so forth. Yeah, even Loko has some idiots supporting them (me included.) The funny thing is seeing a team once so great - have no home and loads of fans just sitting there asking "where the hell has it gone wrong?" lol.......Still hate Spartak over any Russian team though - mainly because of their success. Its part of the human footballing condition, I guess. I'll take your point though that Spartak helped establish the Russian game, especially in Europe - but IMO - CSKA and Loko are taking it steps further.
Forget even that. Spartak established the USSR League and the concept of domestic club football as we know it. Without the Starostins we could've had city teams playing factory outfits for the RSFSR Workers' Physical Culture Festival awards deep into the Sixties. If you mean the RPL, I will name you two: Amkar and Saturn. Ammiac-Carbamite United were founded by Perm's chemical company in 1996 and stumped Zvezda, the local dormant Soviet-era Army outfit, into the ground. Saturn were mostly an amateur side in the Soviet era and would have undoubtedly remained that were it not for the new and exciding times of freedom, democracy, parliamentarism and folks with trunk-sized, heavily tattooed arms, adorned with firmly spread fingers, protruding from the sleeves of their bright maroon dress jackets laying down the capitalist law on all the misfortunate lokhs of the Cold Contry.
LMAO! Oh and you may want to mention that Saturn has its fingers in the numerous flathead establishments across Moscow......lol. The Soviet Union was bent, but not as bent as these mobsters plying Saturn with all that lovely money and a nice new stadium. My point was nearly all of Russian teams have pasts to be ashamed about. That will always happen. Look at the famous Dinamo Dresden. Basically the team of the Staatssicherheit. BTW: In England Preston and Old Etionians helped found the game in the England - what the hell happened there. In 30 years time, no-one will care what Spartak did. I'm sorry to say, but you can't live on past glories. If you had to say which Russian team has been the most successful after say 2000, then I would say Loko. This is what people look to. That is fact - and a reality of football.
Well, one can hardly blame Spartak's short-lived affiliation with the food industry for the shortages, so I guess the Meat can really claim there isn't much shame in their past. Of course, their subsequent following by a certain five-time Hero of the Soviet Union and the whole Che era leave that topic wide open.
Perhaps I don't have the vast Soviet soccer knowledge as you old guys do, but I always had the understanding that it was Dinamo Moskva of the late 50s and early 60s who established soviet football as a formidable club in europe. How far off am I? Also, growing up as a kid in the mid eighties I specifically remember playing soccer with my friends. Of course it was always building 75 (us) against building 79 (them). For whatever reason they always called their team Spartak and we called our team Dinamo (Kiev). Of those many times we played I can't remember one time when Spartak beat Dinamo.
The famous Dinamo and the great Yev Lashin in the sticks, of course. I would say they helped, but it was mainly teams such as yours - DK, that helped put Soviet nations in the forefront in 1986 especially. Thanks to a thing called the Soviet Union and the idiots that ran it. Only CCCP teams you get to see outside the borders were of course reserved for European games. Hence it was usually the teams that got into European competion that got regconized. Spartak for me, and only IMO are good for creating the ethos and laying the foundations that have allowed Loko and CSKA to be accepted into competions such as the CL. Ironically it is the same team which is buggering up Russian soccer from having any chance of more European places open to them. For me I don't really recall or anything that sticks in my mind as a westerner, that Spartak being a great team or perceived as one in the west at that time, only in the 90's. Dynamo Kyiv - the Moscow team of the same name. And the very great Tbilsi side, that outplayed the Hammers once at Upton Park. Christ even the Torps with Streltsov in it. To be honest, can we really count the times of the CCCP? Germany rarely counts the achievements of teams pre 1963?