Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Bigmouth strikes again!
And I’ve got no right to take my place.
With the human race (oh oh).
The above lyrics were eponymously swooned by Morrissey from 1986, released as part of The Smiths album, The Queen is Dead. The lyrics is essentially the Davyhulme-born lead singer worrying how his own big mouth would cause one to say uncouth things not accepted in society, therefore causing the singer to not have a ‘right to take place/with the human race’ or normal company. Without causing offence, this is once again the first thing that comes to mind when hearing Boris Rotenberg’s latest plans for his Dinamo sports society.
Dinamo may relocate to the Fisht Olympic Stadium in Sochi, and talks are currently underway. Match TV actually broke the news earlier in the day, however Director General of Dinamo, Dmitri Rubashko made the following statement to TASS;
There are talks, but it’s quite far from anything substantial. The team is solving the problems in St Petersburg, so we aren’t discussing that here. There can be something in that, but nothing is known exactly, so nothing to talk about yet. That region [Sochi] has no team, but has a good stadium, Fisht, the conditions for football are very good, so it would be logical.
Boris Rotenberg is the Dinamo owner, and is clearly planning on attempting to make use of the lack of a professional football club in the region, and ability to use a 40,000 capacity stadium (which currently stands at 47,695 but will be reduced after the World Cup) at almost very little cost. Rotenberg was almost bankrupted by the building of the new VTB Arena, and therefore wants to finance Dinamo SPb into the RFPL at very little cost. However, he is not exactly seeing the big picture and his “bigmouth strikes again”.
Sochi is a tourist resort, home to the 2014 Olympics and Russian F1 track. There is very little clamour in the area for a professional sports team and is very unlikely that attendances would peak beyond the 5,000 mark due to the location and lust for football in the city.
Furthermore, Dinamo SPb are currently undergoing a healthy period of stability and success near the top of the FNL, a far cry from the two decades preceding takeover by Rotenberg and Dinamo sports society in 2015. The club had to re-brand and re-organise numerous times, and dissolved in both 2010 and 2012. This period is known as the “Dark Ages” to fans, but the club is finally on an upward trend and close to returning to the top flight of Russian football for the first time since 1963. An excellent piece on the site by RFN writer and Podcast host Thomas Giles wonderfully elucidates the history of St. Petersburg’s second club.
READ MORE: Dinamo – The footballing embodiment of Leningrad and St. Petersburg
Sochi is not just a poor fit for football, however. Dinamo themselves are a perfect fit for St. Petersburg as the cities first and most historic club until Zenit’s rise in the 1980s. The club spent the majority of it’s early history in the top flight, reaching the Soviet Cup final on three occasions and becoming city champions 14 times – against great rivals Zenit.
Dinamo fans themselves are whole fully against any proposed move, and thus would like to make their feelings known;
An Official Statement of the Ultras Dinamo SPb addressed directly to the General Director of Dinamo SPb, Dmitri Rubashko:
The active fan community of Dinamo (St. Petersburg) are surprised and worried by the rumours which are circulating in the news about the possible move of the football club to Sochi. During the last three years the team has gained influential sponsors, the results give us all hope that one of the oldest teams in Russia will return to the elite division in the near future.
We don’t understand the point of this move. If a new stadium in Sochi needs a team, a more logical option would be to move there FC Kuban Krasnodar, which is located in the same (Krasnodar) region. We hope that sanity will prevail and FC Dinamo with its youth squad will remain in St. Petersburg and will write new glorious pages in our legendary club’s history.
Roman Grigoryev, the leader of fan association White Movement.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Due to FC Tosno’s rise and recent move to the Petrovsky Stadium, Dinamo have been cast out of the city and have been forced to play at the Electron Stadium in Veliky Novogord at times throughout the season – although most home games have been hosted at the MSA Petrovsky.
They have been forced out of their city to play games at Veliky Novgorod, as the RFU has granted FC Tosno – 30 miles south-east of St. Petersburg, and the old tenants of the Electron Stadium – playing rights at the Petrovsky while Zenit play in the Krestovsky as Dinamo are pushed out in favour of the Premier League teams – to both the MSA and out the city altogether. Though part of the decision has been at the behest of the Petersburg City Police, who do not have enough forces to police Zenit, Tosno, Dinamo SPb and Zenit-2 matches.
Dinamo midfielder Ivan Soloviev recently hit out at the decision ahead of their city derby with Zenit-2;
“We’ll play where they tell us, but I think that it would be better to take an opponent on at the Petrovsky, so that all our fans would be in the stands. Many of those who come to our games in Saint Petersburg may not be able to go to Veliky Novgorod”.
Although the decision to move Dinamo’s home games against Kuban Krasnodar, Rotor Volgograd, Fakel Voronezh and Olimpiyets Nizhny Novgorod was at the behest of the SPb city police and rubber stamped by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, suggestions of nepotism cannot be ignored. It is no surprise that the three teams currently playing in St. Petersburg today have close links within their upper echelons; Zenit and Zenit-2 are of course both owned, funded and ran by Gazprom, and FC Tosno are owned by FortGroup, a commercial real-estate agency based out of Piter.
At first, this seems to be just merely privatisation at work, but something more sinister emerges regarding the investigation of Fort Tower, a twenty-one floor, 80m high mixed use tower block built in Moskovsky District by Q4 2016. The international architects Chapman Taylor were commissioned to design the tower, and describe it as a “new architectural centrepiece of St. Petersburg”. Initially, the plans were made alongside ZAO VTB-Development, a real estate branch of the VTB empire, Dinamo Moscow and SPb’s chief sponsors, but in March 2017, VTB was overlooked in favour of Gazprom, who leased the entire tower block for 4.545 billion rubles (£57.8m). Interfax reports the deal was signed in December but was never disclosed until the investigation in March, and analysts have called the deal to rent Fort Tower the largest in 2016.
For several years, Gazprom has been gradually moving its offices to Saint Petersburg. Two-thirds of all transactions made in 2016 in the office market of the city fell on the entities of the monopolist and its contractors. It can be seen as no coincidence that the VTB-funded Dinamo SPb have been pushed out of the city in favour of FortGroup-owned FC Tosno merely six months after the biggest real estate deal in Russia likewise overlooked VTB in favour of Gazprom and FortGroup.
Moreover, moving FC Tosno to the Petrovsky would likely increase attendances at their home games, a big problem for the RFU in both the RFPL, but particularly the FNL.
READ MORE: Problems with the Trans-Siberian Football League
Understandably, this is obviously why Rubashko sees it as logical for Dinamo SPb to move out of the city – but he is plainly wrong. Zenit-2 and Tosno must give way in favour of the cities true second-team. It would be an unmitigated disaster for the city to lose the ability of a reunification of the two clubs and set up a truly historic Northern Derby; not the real-estate-funded fake derby between Zenit and Tosno.
We at RFN stand with the Dinamo fans and hope that commonsense prevails and Dinamo are forever St. Petersburg.
The post Dinamo SPb relocating to Sochi? Analysis and Fan Reaction appeared first on Russian Football News.