More on Russian football and national resurgence

I hope to take Marc Bennetts’ book Football Dynamo to Russia next month as part of my holiday reading. It is subtitled ‘Russia and the People’s Game’ and purports to be an examination of football’s role in the world’s biggest country.

Bennetts has an article on Open Democracy’s new Russian blog (see also the updated links menu) today which hopefully provides something of a taster. His chosen topic is Russia’s football resurgence and its links to the political and economic fate of the country.

Comments

Anonymous said…
If you haven't already done so, Simon Kuper's "Football against the enemy" is worth a read. The author travels to different parts of the world talking to fans about football and the conection with politics and society in general. There's a particularly good chapter on Russian football, as well as items on Ukraine, the Baltics and Czech...and inevitably of course the yawn-inducing Celtic/Rangers rivalry!
24 May 2008 at 15:05
Owen Polley said…
Indeed, it is an excellent book cw.
27 May 2008 at 08:51
Anonymous said…
So did you read it? I did - excellent book...
15 June 2008 at 14:46
Owen Polley said…
Anon. If you mean Football Dynamo, it's in a drawer with a bunch of holiday stuff ready to be started on the plane to Moscow. Self-discipline you see!
16 June 2008 at 10:41
Anonymous said…
I did mean Football Dynamo. Have a good time in Moscow! Was there recently - went to a CSKA match. Great city...
17 June 2008 at 18:27
Anonymous said…
So what did you think of Football Dynamo?
25 September 2008 at 18:20
Owen Polley said…
An excellent book anon. I would heartily recommend it. Apart from anything else it's a good examination of modern Russia through the prism of football.
26 September 2008 at 10:15
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Football fever in Russia

Russia Blog is getting excited about Euro 2008. Indeed it is drawing parallels between Guus Hiddink and Peter the Great in terms of successful Russo-Dutch exchanges of expertise. Meanwhile, in Moscow, fans have been taking to the streets in order to celebrate the national team’s achievements.
Read more

Guest Post: Leave our Alain alone

By itwassammymcnallywhatdoneit As we know well in Northern Ireland, predicting someone’s views on a range of issues doesn't require a crystal ball, just a clue as to their background - their name, the school they attended or their address. Once you have sniffed out those details, you can identify their tribe and you can then have a fair stab at working out what they think. Of course, tribalism is not just confined to Ulster and tribal loyalties are not always that straightforward. Take Monsieur Alain Rolland for example, born and raised in Ireland but with a French father. For many Welsh rugby fans such continental lineage was proof positive of his preference for the land of his father, Wales's opponents in the rugby world cup semi-final and of course explains his 'outrageous' decision to send off the Welsh captain Sam Warburton. When England were knocked out of the world cup, by perhaps the bitterest of their many 'old enemies' France, Wales found the...
Read more

Stormont might not collapse but paramilitaries continue to disfigure Northern Ireland

Image
The devolved institutions in Northern Ireland are supposedly ‘teetering on the brink’ of collapse yet again.  After repeated failures to agree a balanced budget or implement welfare reform created months of uncertainty, the Executive’s future is now in doubt because the PSNI believes members of the IRA were involved in murdering a republican hit man.  Despite its apparent seriousness, this particular predicament is unlikely to bring the shaky edifice at Stormont crashing down. The IRA was supposed to have disbanded its military ‘structures’ and decommissioned its entire arsenal of weapons back in 2005.  It was on the basis of this understanding that power-sharing resumed in 2007 and the DUP entered government with Sinn Féin.  From the outset it was a fairly flimsy pretext.   Less than a year after John de Chastelain, the retired Canadian general, oversaw decommissioning, the Independent Monitoring Commission reported that the IRA retaine...
Read more