Tuesday 09 April 2013, 15:55
Never Mind the Bolsheviks looks into symbolism behind the crests of clubs in the former Soviet Union… Alania Vladikavkaz, Russia (above left) Capital of North Ossetia and once home to the Alans, the north...
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Monday 25 March 2013, 09:15
It was a story that could have been taken straight from the script of a Hollywood movie. There was no glory, no glittering trophy or hero as such, but amid the utter devastation and suffering wrought by...
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Thursday 14 March 2013, 12:41
As Steaua Bucharest travel to London aiming to dump Chelsea out of the Europa League, Mark Gilbey recalls the last time the Romanians faced an English side in the knock-out stages of a European competition...
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Thursday 07 March 2013, 14:18
Ronald de Boer and Rangers (eventually) faced Anzhi in September 2001 It is in Moscow, not in their home town, that Anzhi Makhachkala will host Newcastle United this evening. The Russian capital lies some...
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Tuesday 19 February 2013, 11:25
An air of confidence permeated through the Highbury pressroom before Arsenal’s Uefa Cup match against Spartak Moscow. It was September 1982, and the general consensus among journalists and commentators...
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Thursday 14 February 2013, 13:15
In some respects this evening is the beginning of a new era for Metalist Kharkiv. Little may have outwardly changed since the Europa League draw was made back in December, but the Ukrainians' match...
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Wednesday 13 February 2013, 09:00
“Frankly,” Arsène Wenger bluntly conceded afterwards, “they were not keen to go.” When the moneymen at UEFA first concocted a plan to expand the Champions League, it is perhaps safe to assume that the...
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Wednesday 06 February 2013, 16:00
The first foreign player in post-Soviet Russian football was Assaf al-Khalifa, a 26-year-old Syrian forward who joined Zhemchuzhina Sochi ahead of the 1994 season. Before him there were, of course, those...
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Thursday 29 November 2012, 12:38
With the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup yet to fall under Uefa’s auspices, a side from the eastern bloc had still to win a major European trophy when the governing body made the draws for their club competitions...
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Tuesday 27 November 2012, 10:44
The Soviet figure skating team had to fight though a media scrum in the arrivals hall at Heathrow Airport. But Britain’s press had not gathered for their benefit. It was January 1989, and also on the flight...
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Thursday 15 November 2012, 11:15
It is a grey November morning in 1945, and an aeroplane emblazoned with the communist red star touches down on the tarmac at Croydon Airport. On board are Dinamo Moscow, here by invitation of the Football...
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Wednesday 07 November 2012, 12:22
FourFourTwo's Eastern European football expert, Mark Gilbey , looks back upon Shakhtar’s quartet of fixtures in the English capital… History is on Chelsea’s side when they face Shakhtar Donetsk this...
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Friday 23 March 2012, 17:16
Much like Timbuktu, Vladivostok is one of those places whose name conjures up evocative images of some distant outpost at the world’s end. “Vladivostok is far away,” Lenin once opined. “But it’s ours....
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Thursday 22 March 2012, 11:12
You could have been forgiven for thinking it was the opening ceremony to an Olympic Games, such was the spectacular opulence surrounding the gala event Shakhtar Donetsk held to celebrate the club’s 75th...
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Wednesday 14 March 2012, 17:09
As Real Madrid welcome CSKA Moscow to the Bernabeu, international football expert Michael Yokhin explains why many in West London should be watching the visiting Ivorian striker... When asked about his...
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Friday 02 March 2012, 15:01
It wasn't supposed to be like this for Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk; not this season. Ahead of his first full Premier League campaign in Ukraine, a bullish Juande Ramos had once again spoken of the club’s...
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Friday 17 February 2012, 16:28
The most eyebrow-raising midweek result was Metalist Kharkiv's dismantling of Red Bull Salzburg. Eastern Europe expert Mark Gilbey introduces the Ukrainian upstarts with a long history It’s usually...
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Friday 03 February 2012, 13:51
Football is still to emerge from its winter hibernation in Ukraine. And with temperatures well below zero at the moment, it is around this time of year when many Premier League clubs head off to training...
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Friday 27 January 2012, 10:30
And so, it seems, Russia’s great Love affair is finally over. Every CSKA Moscow fan knew this day was coming; the amicable divorce has been stretched out for some time, but after seven *ahem* eventful...
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Tuesday 17 January 2012, 15:38
Jádson walked out onto the pitch at the Donbass Arena for one last time yesterday. The pint-sized playmaker surveyed the stadium where he scored the first goal at for Shakhtar Donetsk against Obolon Kyiv...
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Wednesday 21 December 2011, 12:45
It's been a fascinating year in the former Soviet Union, as our Iron Curtain-twitcher Mark Gilbey reports... This time last year, a bare-chested Luciano Spalletti was trotting around an icy Petrovsky...
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Friday 12 August 2011, 14:36
Saturday 11 August 1979; a date that shall forever remain etched into the soul of Uzbek football. On this fateful midsummer’s morning the central Asian republic’s most successful side of the Soviet era...
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Tuesday 26 July 2011, 16:02
Every now and again, mainly when there’s no actual football being played, someone somewhere chirps up with the idea of creating a combined Russian and Ukrainian championship. It’s a plan that’s unlikely...
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Thursday 21 July 2011, 12:38
Every aspect of modern football can be broken down into commodities that are compared, priced and sold on the transfer market – and none more so than youth. The embodiment of hope, it's the thing that...
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Friday 15 July 2011, 12:26
When Juande Ramos popped up in eastern Ukraine last October to replace Volodymyr Bessonov as manager of Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk, there was a renewed hope of establishing a third way. A way of breaking that...
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Friday 08 July 2011, 13:44
The Ukraine Premier League doesn't kick off until tonight but Dynamo Kyiv have already laid down a marker for the title. Last season's runners-up beat their arch rivals Shakhtar Donetsk 3-1 to...
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Tuesday 05 July 2011, 17:17
And so the new season begins in Ukraine just as the previous one had ended: with a face-off between the Premier League’s “big two”. Dynamo Kiev and Shakhtar Donetsk meet later this evening in Poltava to...
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Thursday 23 June 2011, 12:25
Some say it was English merchants who introduced football to Kazakhstan early in the 20th Century during Tsarist times at Semey – then known as Semipalatinsk – a trading post in the north-east of the country...
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Friday 17 June 2011, 12:09
Somehow, it was fitting that Ruud Gullit's Russian adventure should end with a calamitous own goal. Sergei Omelyanchuk’s header past Terek Grozny goalkeeper Soslan Dzhanaev in the last minute condemned...
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Wednesday 15 June 2011, 16:33
Stuart Pearce was perhaps correct in his assumption that Ukraine “are probably under a touch more pressure” than England after Pavlo Yakovenko’s side lost their opening game of the Euro 2011 finals against...
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Tuesday 10 May 2011, 09:00
You have to go back to 1996, when Chornomorets Odesa were silver medallists, for the last time it wasn't Dynamo Kyiv and Shakhtar Donetsk occupying the Premier League’s top two positions in one order...
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Wednesday 04 May 2011, 12:02
It was a grudge match between two old foes who dominate the league. It featured a wonderful goal from a Ballon d’Or winner. It was an ill-tempered affair at times. It saw a wily manager red carded. It...
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Wednesday 27 April 2011, 11:11
Thirty-four – the number of Moldovan referees whose names appeared on a missive sent to the Federaţia Moldovenească de Fotbal at the weekend threatening to withdraw their services from fixtures involving...
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Wednesday 20 April 2011, 09:33
Well, the only way is up for whoever succeeds Valery Karpin as manager of Spartak Moscow. Shortly after the 42-year-old tendered his resignation to the club’s board on Monday afternoon, Tom Tomsk recorded...
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Monday 11 April 2011, 15:10
There may well have been a sore head or two among the ranks of the Obolon Kyiv team yesterday morning. The club’s president Oleksandr Slobodyan holds a similar position at Ukraine’s largest brewery, also...
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Monday 28 March 2011, 17:36
The advertising hoardings at the Boris Paichadze National Stadium escaped the kind of treatment once famously meted out by Georgia’s manager Temuri Ketsbaia to the St. James’s Park signage after Levan...
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Monday 21 March 2011, 14:40
The beginning of the new Premier League season in Russia hasn't been plain sailing for two of Chelsea’s old boys. Ruud Gullit’s Terek Grozny have lost both of their fixtures without scoring - although...
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Thursday 17 March 2011, 17:12
Valeriy Lobanovskiy was a man with the Midas touch. “Golden generation” is a term bandied about all too freely these days, but the pioneering coach was able to forge great sides during each of his three...
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Wednesday 16 March 2011, 16:00
Burly Russian chaps administering a kicking, guns and blackmail; it all sounds very 007 and definitely not goings-on you’d expect at a football club, but things look like they could get very ugly for Dan...
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Monday 14 March 2011, 15:08
It may have been back in January that Ruud Gullit was appointed Terek Grozny manager, but even before the kick off of their 1-0 defeat to Zenit St Petersburg yesterday, Never Mind the Bolsheviks was still...
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Friday 11 March 2011, 10:00
Huzzah! The Russian Premier League is back – bigger and, hopefully, better than ever before. The bumper 44-game transitional season that ushers in a controversial calendar shift from Russia’s traditional...
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Thursday 10 March 2011, 12:43
It’s a lovely little trip out east to Ukraine for Bobby Mancini and fans from the blue half of Manchester today for their Europa League tie with Dynamo Kyiv. ‘Tis a wonderful city. If you do happen to...
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Tuesday 18 January 2011, 09:30
You could argue that an opening ceremony consisting of a man some people don’t care for kicking a ball about in half-*rsed fashion in a half-empty stadium managed to capture the essence of just what the...
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Thursday 16 December 2010, 11:12
Hello. This blog has company again. Freelance journalist James Appell has returned once more, this time to help Never Mind the Bolsheviks pick its Russian Premier League team of the season. Enjoy/agree...
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Monday 06 December 2010, 12:50
Zenit St Petersburg won the Premier League, Welliton scored loads and most people outside of Tatarstan found watching Rubin Kazan rather dull. That’s the season in a nutshell. Here’s what else happened...
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Friday 03 December 2010, 11:06
Right now you probably hate Russia and just want to close your eyes and put your fingers in your ears when anyone says “2018 World Cup”, but here’s what the reaction has been out east. “Russia is humbled...
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Monday 29 November 2010, 15:19
Three goalless matches out of eight might not scream final day excitement in Russia, but golly was the conclusion to the Premier League a good ‘un. The four-way relegation scrap between Alania Vladikavkaz...
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Wednesday 24 November 2010, 10:59
This morning Daniel Voronkov buried his wife and two young children in Sevastopol, Ukraine. They were killed by the reckless driving of Vladislav Piskun, a defender with the Premier League club PFC Sevastopol...
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Monday 22 November 2010, 15:26
So that’s pretty much everything squared up at the top, but my goodness are we going to have one humdinger of a final day down at the bottom in Russia. Any one of four teams can still follow Sibir Novosibirsk...
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Friday 19 November 2010, 15:48
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaall the way over in Central Asia (or very eastern Europe, in UEFA land) fop-haired purveyor of all things footy in Kazakhstan, Roman Lopatenko, will probably think twice before he starts trying...
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Tuesday 16 November 2010, 12:51
It was a busy weekend for trophy engravers in the former Soviet republics. Lokomotiv Astana picked up the Kazakh Cup, BATE Borisov made it five Belarusian championships on the bounce and over in Armenia...
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Tuesday 09 November 2010, 16:35
Good golly. We had seven-goal thrillers in Siberia AND Moscow at the weekend, while evidently someone’s had a quiet word with Gurban Berdiyew and told him how to get Rubin Kazan playing some half-decent...
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Friday 05 November 2010, 15:49
After Zenit St Petersburg’s recent wobble, normal service was resumed at the top of the Russian Premier League with their 3-0 win over Alania Vladikavkaz at the Petrovsky Stadium last weekend. Zenit are...
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Wednesday 03 November 2010, 16:40
It might not be too long before you start hearing a lot more about Bruno. Not Frank or Brookes. Nope, we're talking 19-year-old Bruno Renan, who last week became the zillionth Brazilian to turn out...
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Monday 01 November 2010, 15:04
Matchday 26 in the Russian Premier League brought you sibling rivalry, World War One battlefields and a not so happy birthday for Obafemi Martins, explains Mark Gilbey ... Friday Krylia Sovetov Samara...
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Friday 29 October 2010, 13:02
We’ve reached the tail-end of the season in the Premier League over in Russia, meaning terms like “relegation six-pointer” can officially be attached to fixtures like Tom Tomsk versus Amkar Perm down at...
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Tuesday 26 October 2010, 11:42
‘Ark at him. Mircea Lucescu wasn’t a happy chappie at Shakhtar Donetsk’s open training session ahead of their Vyscha Liga fixture with Vorskla Poltava, even if it was his 200th league match in charge of...
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Monday 25 October 2010, 12:43
It won’t be remembered as a cracker, round 25 of the Russian Premier League, but Zenit St Petersburg conceding three at Anzhi Makhachkala? None of the four sides in European action managing a win AND football...
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Tuesday 19 October 2010, 11:32
Valery Karpin probably didn’t expect tonight’s game to be a table-top clash. Both sides on six points, the winner will almost certainly qualify for the next round. For the loser? Well, there are three...
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Tags: Welliton, Valery Karpin, Spartak Moscow, Aiden McGeady, Chelsea, Temuri Ketsbaia, Jose Mourinho, Frank Lampard, Jano Ananidze, Didier Drogba, Carlo Ancelotti, Roman Abramovich, Ibson, MSK Zilina, Georgia, Arsenal, John Terry, Ari, Alex
Tuesday 19 October 2010, 11:32
You’d imagine someone has probably had a word with those toffee-nosed folk on the door at Harrods and informed them of Shakhtar Donetsk’s arrival at Luton Airport on Sunday evening. But NMTB wagers Mircea...
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Friday 08 October 2010, 15:59
Say what you want about Moldovan football, but one problem it definitely didn’t have was ticket touts. (The official attendance for this Divizia Naţională match at the Stadionul Sătesc between Gagauziya...
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Monday 04 October 2010, 16:06
This title race lark is effectively over in Russia, but now the teams at the bottom have decided it might be a good idea if they start winning matches too, we’ve got one humdinger of a relegation battle...
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Friday 01 October 2010, 15:29
Sure, it may be Chelsea-Arsenal on Sunday, but there are a couple of derbies on the other side of the Iron Curtain which might also pique your interest… Zimbru Chişinău v Sheriff Tiraspol (Divizia Naţională...
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Tuesday 28 September 2010, 13:50
Our expert on all things Eastern European, Mark Gilbey , gives us the low-down on the weekend's goings-on in Russia... Friday Spartak Moskva 2-2 Amkar Perm God, Valery Karpin, you're so self-centred...
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Tuesday 21 September 2010, 15:28
Huzzah! Another victory for football’s moneymen. Up yours, loyal supporter! There’s a very good reason why hitherto, professional football in Russia has been played over the summer months. Mainly because...
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Tuesday 14 September 2010, 13:51
Our man peeking out from behind the iron curtain, Mark Gilbey gives us the low-down on the former Soviet Union’s Champions League contenders: Rubin Kazan, Spartak Moskva and Shakhtar Donetsk “Everyone...
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Tuesday 07 September 2010, 13:14
The Ukrainian Premier-Liha isn’t just about the Dynamo Kyiv/Shakhtar Donetsk cartel, even if it has been absolutely aaaaages since anyone has broken their duopoly on the top two spots (Chornomorets Odessa...
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Wednesday 12 May 2010, 16:15
Yep, FK Qäbälä really is the next stage in former Arsenal and England defender Tony Adams’ managerial career.Tony has been charged with leading Azeri football into a new era. Quite where he’s going to...
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Tuesday 11 May 2010, 16:45
Mircea Lucescu is a lucky chap. The Romanian not only guided Shakhtar Donetsk to their fifth Premier-Liga title in Ukraine last week with a 1-0 win over Dynamo Kyiv at the Donbass Arena, but he’s also...
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Friday 02 April 2010, 11:30
One day NMTB will settle down. Not yet, the blog has only recently turned 27. At the moment it’s getting all of this “seeing the world” lark out of its system. NMTB harbours dreams of visiting far-flung...
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Monday 22 March 2010, 16:41
Phase one of Bunyodkor’s plans for world domination is well underway. Mwah ha ha ha ha… Ahem, yes. Right, so the new, slimmer (and probably not better) Uzbek Oliy League kicked off a fortnight ago, with...
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Thursday 11 March 2010, 14:43
The bid to host a World Cup in Russia contains unsubtle approval to rogue states, finds Mark Gilbey NMTB will forgive you for not being au fait with the political goings-on in Transdniestr, South Ossetia...
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Friday 05 March 2010, 18:00
Привет If there existed such an article as the television licence in Eastern Europe, you could consider the beholder suitably disgruntled. The region’s output is not in the vanguard of excellence, not...
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Friday 26 February 2010, 17:00
Sigmund Freud would’ve loved to have had the late Saparmurat Niyazov on his couch. (Not in the biblical sense, you understand). It was specious logic that provided the basis for his creation of a pervasive...
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Thursday 25 February 2010, 15:30
When NMTB filed its missive entitled “Why Shakhtar will beat Fulham” last week, the tenet of the blog was pertaining to the Ukrainians' Europa League tie against Fulham as a whole, not just the first...
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Thursday 18 February 2010, 12:30
The “face police” stood sentinel at the entrances to the haunts of the rich and famous are a staple fixture across the FSU, keeping out miscreants and poor people like you. Not so long ago NMTB was in...
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Monday 15 February 2010, 18:00
AZERI PREMYER LIQASİ RESULTS: Sat 13 Feb Olimpik Bakı 2-0 Standard Bakı, Karvan Evlakh 0-1 Neftçi Bakı, FK Bakı 2-0 Qäbälä, Turan 1-0 Muğan Salyan, Khazar Lankaran 0-0 Qarabağ Agdam, İnter Bakı 2-1 Simurq...
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Monday 25 January 2010, 16:00
Congratulations to Rubin Kazan. Well, OK, to Rubin-2 Kazan, on their 5-2 victory against FK Aktobe in Sunday’s CIS Cup final. Yep, the annual gathering to ascertain who’s got the best reserve team in the...
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Friday 22 January 2010, 16:30
It's CIS: Moscow (pt. II)... We’ve just had the second rest day of the CIS Cup, which means it’s semi-finals time. Collectively the 16 teams notched up a rather impressive 67 goals in the group stages...
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Monday 18 January 2010, 16:00
For things to avoid in Moscow it’s right up there with a stint in the Lubyanka, but NMTB previewed the CIS Cup last week, so may as well try and generate a modicum of interest in the competition by informing...
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Friday 15 January 2010, 20:00
*THUD!* As you perhaps may not have ascertained from NMTB’s rather puerile attempt at conveying sound via the medium of the written word, that “noise” was in fact the final nail being driven into the coffin...
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Thursday 07 January 2010, 15:30
С Новым Годом! (Happy New Year!) NMTB doesn’t like this winter break lark the FSU’s currently got going on. There’s a distinct lack of football, it’s far too cold AND you to have to celebrate Christmas...
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Sunday 27 December 2009, 10:00
NMTB has a litany of grievances vis-à-vis the unveiling of the official Euro 2012 logo and slogan(!) in Kyiv. Was it absolutely necessary for that simpering moron Michel Platini to host a chimps' tea...
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Wednesday 23 December 2009, 10:00
There’s bringing a competition into disrepute and then there’s downright taking the p**s. Mick McCarthy damaged the “international credibility of the Premier League” last week by fielding a second-string...
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Friday 11 December 2009, 16:00
Здравствуйте Дамы и Господа. NMTB often has a butchers at the back pages of the tabloids to see what barbed witticisms are splashed across them the day after England put in a below par performance. After...
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Tuesday 08 December 2009, 13:00
Never mind the Irish; why is there no FSU (former Soviet Union) team heading to South Africa next summer? Attempting to watch football on holiday for men takes on one of two uncomfortable forms: i) Either...
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Sunday 25 October 2009, 08:00
This week Never Mind the Bolsheviks wants to introduce you to a quintet of enigmatic brothers who reside far away in Central Asia. They are a rather peculiar bunch of siblings, the 'Stans. The biggest...
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Thursday 17 September 2009, 08:00
Hello again from the other side of the Iron Curtain. The observant will recall that a couple of days ago NMTB brought you a run-down of the three Former Soviet Union entrants to the Champions League group...
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Tuesday 15 September 2009, 16:00
NMTB isn’t a blog that exudes a natural ebullience. Habitually it is a curious character of miserable disposition. And there are a few things that will place it in a soporific mood, not least the incoherent...
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Wednesday 09 September 2009, 12:00
As a teenager banished to Kyiv by its parents, Never Mind the Bolsheviks often found itself in Shevchenko Park of a weekend, chasing women or getting into some other jolly jape. The leafy public garden...
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Monday 31 August 2009, 12:00
Never Mind the Bolsheviks is back (at last!) after its annual sojourn in the Motherland. No, it wasn't interned in some Far Eastern gulag, but in Moldova – which, some would contest, isn't an altogether...
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Tuesday 02 June 2009, 15:00
Flying can evoke painful memories. Waking up at an ungodly hour to drive to Luton Airport for family holidays in Benidorm. Departure lounges ruled by rampant kids wielding beeping Game Boys. Disingenuously...
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Wednesday 27 May 2009, 14:00
This week NMTB is heading out east, waaaaay out east. To the Far East, no less, to say zdravstvuyte to a team at the wrong end of the Trans-Siberian Railway on Russia’s Pacific coast. But before it arrives...
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Tuesday 19 May 2009, 15:00
Never Mind the Bolsheviks has a lot of time on its hands. That's why the blog has spent this week poring over league tables past and present from across the former Soviet Union to pick out and poke...
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Tuesday 12 May 2009, 15:00
NMTB finds itself in familiar territory once again this week as it touches down in another of its former homes, Ukraine, to join in the celebrations for Dynamo Kyiv’s 13th title success. But first the...
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Tuesday 05 May 2009, 15:00
Welcome to Never Mind the Bolsheviks, a new blog about football in the 15 former Soviet republics who used to nestle behind the Iron Curtain. And there’s no better place to start than with a piece of history...
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