Champions League: unlikely Sheriff Tiraspol beats Real Madrid – HuffPost

JUAN MEDINA / Reuters

FOOTBALL – A name unknown to the general public, a victory snatched in the 90th minute on a fantastic strike and a complex geopolitical history. Tuesday evening September 28, on the lawn of real Madrid, the Moldovan club Sheriff Tiraspol achieved THE great performance of this debut Champions League by overcoming the Spanish giant, winner of the trophy thirteen times.

In the first half, already, the Madrilenians should have been worried. While they had largely dominated their subject, they had yet returned to the locker room late, led by a goal scored on the sole offensive of their modest opponents. The fact in particular of Geórgios Athanasiádis, Greek goalkeeper in a state of grace of a team which aligned thirteen nationalities at kick-off on the scoresheet.

Two wins in two matches

Yes Karim Benzema put the two clubs on a par in the middle of the second half, Real were never going to get back to the front, despite a plethora of opportunities. Worse, at the last minute of regulation time, the Luxembourger Sebastien thill sent a clear shot in the top corner of Thibault Courtois. Two goals to one and a feat that the person concerned would describe as follows: “We come from all countries, that’s our strength!”

This Wednesday, September 29 in the morning, Sheriff Tiraspol is therefore leading Pool D, with two victories against Real Madrid and Shakhtar Donetsk, and before receiving in three weeks an Inter Milan already relegated to five points. A performance already historic for the Moldovans, who had never before taken part in the premier competition of club football.

Especially since it must be said: this club does not have much in common with Real Madrid, or even with the rest of the teams that take part in the Football Champions League. The club’s parent company is indeed a nebulous conglomerate, entrenched in a pro-Russian separatist enclave in Moldova, Transdniestria.

Russian gas and self-proclaimed republic

This strip of land seceded from Moldova in a short war after the fall of the USSR in 1991. It is kept afloat by 1,500 Russian soldiers and gracious deliveries of gas, Moscow insisting on having a beachhead. in Eastern Europe, faced with the successive enlargements of the EU and NATO.

This self-proclaimed republic also has state attributes: a currency, a police. And it cultivates a certain Soviet nostalgia, with its flag struck with a hammer and sickle or its statues of Lenin in Tiraspol, the capital.

Corn de facto, in command of the territory is Sheriff, a sprawling group whose logo, a five-pointed star of American sheriffs, is displayed everywhere. Founded by a former policeman, Victor Gushan, it controls everything: energy, alcohol, steel, supermarkets, gas stations and of course the football club which therefore made its debut this month in the Champions League.

Brutal methods

“Victor Gushan is the person who has the most influence here, in the political and economic world”, notes Anatoli Diroun, director of the School of Political Studies of Tiraspol, stressing that the Sheriff group sponsors and controls the party in power, “Renewal”.

Victor Gushan, who did not wish to be interviewed by AFP, founded his company in 1993 with another ex-policeman, Ilia Kazmaly, taking advantage of the privatizations of the period of savage capitalism that swept through the former USSR during the 1990s.

The company rounded up a number of companies, recalls Valeri Litskaï, an advisor to the then transdniestrian president and former foreign minister. “Sheriff won,” he says, “he offered the best prices and guaranteed” that the factories would run. But Valeri Litskaï also recognizes that the group had brutal methods, a past “not pretty, pretty”. “There was a very hard fight”, he recalls, “in our cemeteries, the alleys are full of bandits”.

The former foreign minister readily admits that the authorities did not seek “to find out who was killing whom”. “It’s not very pretty to say, but it is reality”.

Pauperization against the EU

Today, no one comes to disturb Sheriff’s domination. According to the investigative media RISE Moldova, the group collects a third of the territory’s budget. Its companies export textile and steel products across Europe, as well as caviar to the United States and Japan.

The president of the self-proclaimed republic does not have enough laudatory words for Sheriff, who financed his election campaign. “They create jobs, they invest”, told AFP Vadim Krasnosselski, the current president of Transdniestria, whose electoral campaign was financed by Sheriff, “they are reliable and trusted partners”.

But the statistics available give another picture. The region has seen its population halved in thirty years, rising to 250,000 inhabitants. In question, an exodus of the working population and of the youth because of too low incomes, 200 to 300 dollars (170 to 260 euros) per month on average, that is to say less than in Moldova, which is however the poorest country from Europe.

The new Moldovan president, the pro-European Maïa Sandu, wants her country to join the European Union, calling for the Russian withdrawal from Transdniestria. But for old people of the old generation, like former Minister Litskai, nothing will change. “Russia gives us free gas and soldiers, and in return it has its zone of influence” in Europe, “we are very happy with the status quo”. Just like football fans must appreciate to see this little country which officially does not even exist shine in the face of the world.

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