17 July 2017. An Observation on Working-Class Football Culture in Europe

“Ваше место тут” (“Your place is here”… idiomatically, “You belong here”)… the rowdy backers of FK Lokomotiv Moskva in the (in)famous South Stands at Lokomotiv Central Stadium…

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You back a side because your dad does; all his mates do, as does the entire neighbourhood. You’ve seen the people going en masse to the matches! It’s neighbourhood and team pride all rolled up in one. If we’re talking REAL football… let’s not forget Fr Christos in Thessaloniki who shows up at all the matches. Some tight-arsed people complained… but the people put up a FB page Hands Off Our Father Christos! The bishop didn’t ban him from the pitch…

Some middle-class people look down their noses at this… but I’d remind them that people CHOOSE their pastimes and that backing this side or that one is a far less harmful occupation than some of the things indulged in by the scornful bourgeois. Indeed…

I do confide that their real problem with it is that it’s “common”…

BMD

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22 November 2015. Now, For Something ENTIRELY Different… The FK Lokomotiv Moskva “Mascot”

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FK Lokomotiv Moskva is one of the main football teams in Moscow. Lokomotiv won the Russian Premier League in 2002 and 2004, the USSR Cup in 1936 and 1957, and the Russian Cup in 1996, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2007, and 2015. The club was the league runner-up in 1959, 1995, 1999, 2000, and 2001, and finished third in 1994, 1998, 2005, 2006, and 2014. Lokomotiv was the Russian Super Cup holder in 2003 and 2005. They’re not known as the Mighty Parovozy (Choo-Choos) for nought. The present roster has 13 players from Russia, 3 from Serbia, 2 from Brazil, and one each from Croatia, Portugal, Senegal, Morocco, the Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Congo-Brazzaville. The Team Captain is centre-back defender Vedran Ćorluka from Croatia. In June 2015, after Ćorluka helped Lokomotiv to win the Russian Cup, fans named him the team’s Player of the Year. The most vocal and raucous backers sit in the South Stand… the side’s main rivals are FK Spartak Moskva (“Meat”), FK Torpedo Moskva (“Black n’ Whites”), and FK Saturn Moscow Oblast (“Aliens”). Therefore, the sports-reader would say, “The Choo-Choos blanked the Black n’ Whites” or “The Aliens trashed the Meat”, and everybody gets it. This little guy is their on-pitch “mascot”. Shades of Thomas the Tank Engine!

Red n’ Green forever! Need you guess which side I back in Russian footie?

BMD

Oldest FC Zenit St Petersburg Fan Dies at 103

Regina Donde (1909-2012) (right) at the pitch for the match… where else?

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On Monday, a spokesman for Russian champions FC Zenit St Petersburg announced that their oldest fan passed away at the age of 103. Regina Donde attended her first match in 1929, when the club was little more than a bunch of metal plant workers, and a full eleven years before the team assumed its current name of Zenit. A team spokesman wrote on Twitter, “On Friday, 7 September, our oldest supporter, Regina Samuilovna Donde, died in the 104th year of her life”. She had supported Zenit in their various incarnations for 83 years; the last match she attended was a 1-1 draw against FC Lokomotiv Moscow in May 2011.

10 September 2012

RIA-Novosti

http://en.ria.ru/sports/20120910/175877511.html