ABSTRACT
The extraordinary story of Russian football brings to mind Bill Shankly’s aphorism about football being more serious than life and death. Russians would surely agree:
like the Russian captain who spent 10 years in a Siberian labour camp for playing for his country against a French communist team (l’Etoile rouge);
like the Kiev Dinamo players forced to play a ‘match of death’ against their Nazi occupiers;
like the thousands of coaches, medics, administrators, and players tortured and murdered in a mass purge after World War II;
like the 350 fans crushed to death on October 20, 1982 in Moscow’s Lenin Stadium—the greatest tragedy in the history of world football; and
like the men and women murdered in the oligarch scramble to control modern-day Russian—and world—football.
