BarcelonaJust five months after securing the most important victory of his career as a coach, Yuriy Vernydub wears a military uniform. The coach of Sheriff Tiraspol, the Moldovan team that was able to surprise Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu by defeating it in the Champions League by 1-2, has returned to his country, Ukraine, to serve in the army. “I have lived my life, I have already done everything. These days my team has games, but they know I won’t be there. I can’t be anywhere other than here, fighting, “he said. Today, the Sheriff hosts Milsani in a league match without the coach who took them to the Champions League when they faced Madrid, Inter and, curiously, the Ukrainian Shakhtar Donetsk, a team they defeated.
Yuriy Vernydub, who was a defensive midfielder in the 1980s, when he came to play in the Soviet First Division with the Dnipro, has worked for many years in Russia, having played for Zenit St. Petersburg. As a coach, he now had his best time, at the age of 56, at the head of the Sheriff, a club that is also part of this political board that is the area of the former Soviet Union. The Sheriff is the team from the city of Tiraspol, the capital of the Transnistrian region, an open wound, a small strip of land between Moldova and Ukraine, recognized as an independent official state only by Russia. In 1990, Moldova, one of the smallest Soviet republics, declared independence. Moldovans are a people united with Romanian, with an almost similar language. But in the Transnistrian region almost 60% of the population was Russian, descendants of military or Russians exiled from Siberia by the Soviet government here for being dissidents or criminals, as the parents of the writer Nicolai Lilin, who explains in the his book Siberian education. When Moldova became independent from the Soviet Union, the local population did not feel secure and they also declared themselves independent, in a case similar to that of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in 2014. Always with the support of Russia. As is now the case with Ukraine, Moldova also has unhealed wounds from those years when the USSR collapsed.
Between March and July 1992, the so-called Transnistrian Civil War took place, when more than 1,500 people lost their lives. At the end of the war, it was agreed that Transnistria would become independent de facto, although forming part of Moldova. A diplomatic hole in Europe that allows Sheriff Tiraspol, the local club, to win the Moldovan league based in a territory that is not recognized in Moldova. The club belongs to the company that controls almost everything in this region, Sheriff, a company founded on June 23, 1993 by Viktor Gushan and Ilya Kazmaly, former members of the Soviet secret services. They created this business group that controls everything from gas stations to trade, through the media or, of course, sports. Transnistria is a fairly Russian feud on the western border of Ukraine. And proof of the personal conflicts of many people, his coach was a Ukrainian who has now left to fight Russia. From the Santiago Bernabeu to the war. If almost all the players in the Ukrainian league, especially the foreigners, have managed to escape, in many cases thanks to the support of the Romanian federation, which has managed it with the coach of Dynamo Kyiv, veteran Mircea Lucescu, Vernydub has preferred to return to defend his country.
FINA does not expel Russian swimmers, but will make them compete as neutrals
The reactions from the world of sports continue to come, after FIFA’s decision to leave the Russian national team out of the World Cup, one of the most significant, as the last precedent was that of Yugoslavia in 1992, when the decision they took over the United Nations, which expelled Yugoslav sport in the midst of the Balkan war. Russia, however, has the right to veto the vote at the United Nations, so in this case the decisions are taken by the corresponding federations, one of the last the International Volleyball Federation, which has decided to leave the Russians without the World Cup that organized this summer. In volleyball, rugby and rowing, Russian and Belarusian athletes were expelled from all competitions yesterday, while the International Swimming Federation, in addition to withdrawing a medal of honor from Putin, will allow Russian swimmers to continue competing. but without being able to use his flag, his anthem or the name of Russia. “Individual athletes must be accepted as neutral athletes,” the FINA statement said.
Private labels also have their say. Thus, the German sportswear brand Adidas has interrupted with immediate effect the collaboration with the Russian Football Federation. Although, according to German brand sources, 3% of its business came from products sold in Russia, it has decided to stop supplying the equipment to equipment in the Russian Federation. Also in Germany, Schalke 04, a club that announced the resignation of one of its sponsors, the Russian state-owned gas company Gazprom, has seen sales of T-shirts skyrocket now that it has removed the brand’s logo. The contract with Gazprom guarantees Schalke 04, currently in the Second Division, 9 million euros a year. UEFA has also renounced its sponsorship deal with Gazprom.
In the fencing, the president of the International Federation, the Russian oligarch of the metal sector Alisher Usmanov, had to resign after appearing on the list of 26 tycoons sanctioned by the European Union for Russia’s attack on Ukraine . An ally of Putin, Usmanov was a member of the organizing committee of the Sochi Olympics and until recently was a major shareholder in Premier League Arsenal. Born in Uzbekistan but a Russian citizen, Usmanov married a prestigious coach who is now the president of the Russian Gymnastics Federation.
