CS / CSKA / CSKA Mosvka

There are many Brazilians playing in the Russian Premiership League. CSKA is the team with most of them: Vagner Love, Jo (ex-Corinthians but now injured), Dudu Cearense and Daniel Carvalho. Therefore, I decided to support CSKA.

After visiting Kolomenskoe, I went to the match between CSKA and Rubin, which is a team from Kazan (the capital of Tatarstan). I was kind of scared of going, since there are hooligans in every soccer match, regardless the country. However, I found the whole experience to be extremely positive: the seats were all numbered, each section was supervised by a babushka who checked tickets and at least 5 poliecemen + 2 army commandos, and they even gave me small plastic bags to put on my seat (it was drizzling)! Rubin scored the first goal, but CSKA came back and Dudu Cearense scored the second goal for CSKA. The only downside was some racist cheers from the fans, who imitated a monkey everytime a black (and I guess Brazilian) player from Rubin touched the ball.

On the following Wednesday I went to see CSKA play Arsenal for the Champions League. It was at the Lokomotiv stadium, and we went by subway to avoid the traffic. Here's a pic of Corrado and Sergio at the station (it was Corrado's first time on the Moscow subway although he's been in Russia for 2 years):

The stadium is pretty small, but it's been recently renovated and looked very awesome. Here's me at the entrance:

Security was very good too, and I was frisked at least 3 times. The cops cordoned off some areas around the stadium, so there were many small lines on the way but never chaos. This is the three of us before the game started:

During the line-up, they played the Champions League song and tears came to my eyes. I never imagined I'd ever see such a great game in my life. Here are the players (that's Gilberto Silva on the screen):

The beginning of the match was quite tense, and Arsenal was dominating. At the 25th minute though, Dudu Cearense was fouled near the box and Daniel Carvalho scored a beautiful goal. A miracle was starting to take shape: CSKA 1 x Arsenal 0. Here's a pic of the scoreboard:

We were sitting on the 1st row, and I am sure I was on TV during the goal celebrations. This is how close the cameraman was:

And here's Daniel Carvalho during a corner kick:

The rest of the game was exciting as CSKA played defense fiercely and Arsenal's midfield was totally ineffective. Tierry Henry actually scored a legitimate goal at the 85th minute, but the ref thought he'd touched the ball with his hand. Too bad for Arsenal, but it was time to celebrate! Here are some pics of me, some drunken fans who took their T-shirts off and the fans with colorful placards:

We went for dinner after the match as the 3 of us were starving. Sergio insisted we had pizza, so we drove for miles until we found an Italian place. Can't complain though, since Corrado's driver dropped me off one block away from home.

The funniest thing happened the following day: Sergio told the GM that we'd gone to the match and the GM then came to my cube. I thought he was going to complain that we were taking too many risks and yada-yada-yada, but he actually asked me to buy him tickets the next time we go to a match!

Next 2 matches: Spartak x Inter Milan (got tickets already) and CSKA x Porto (Sergio's driver will buy us tickets). I am also trying to buy a CSKA shirt and have my name in Cyrillic printed on the back! Will work on it next week.