Loko - MOTIV

See the locomotive back there?

Rossiiskiye zhelezny dorogi and I have not seen eye to eye since my overnight train back from St. Petersburg (oh I know, I know, the Russian railways are where you meet the most interesting people; well to you I say, yes, and also where you meet the most disgusting germs/bird diseases). But I set aside our disagreements to go see Lokomotiv (who's that?) take on Moscow's Dinamo, who are ranked 10th and 5th in Russia's Premier League, respectively.

Since this is my second Loko game, I'm going to go ahead an call myself a fan, although I'm not a fan of their colors -- red and green. They look like Christmas trees in their away uniforms. Anyway, because Dinamo is a better quality opponent than last time (that was Tom, whose record against Loko in the last four games or something is an astonishing 0-0-4, with a total goals scored of ZERO), tickets were more expensive. Thus for the same price which last time got us tickets at about Tomsk's six (see right)

we were only able to sit in the fanataky section, which are located behind the goals. (At those prices, they still only filled about 60% of the stadium.) The nice devushka at the kassa, however, helped me out, guiding me towards seats in the back corner of the section, away from the shirtless crazies.

So here's the view from our seats this time:

Q: But VB, why can't you see anything?

A: Well, in addition to the men who showed their fanhood/macho character by standing barechested and smoking the whole game, there were also flags and the smoke of fireworks set off at various times during the match.

Like when we scored! And about time too, because Loko dominated the whole first half. Although to be fair, we could hardly put any shots on frame. I think it was maybe the 70th minute before we got our goal, which was beautiful. Unfortunately, Dinamo answered just a few minutes later on some terrible defensive work by Loko.

But possibly even more entertaining than the game itself were the fans. First of all, when you arrive, you (being a 20 to 50-year-old Russian male) have to shake hands with everyone in the seats around you before you get serious and start flicking off the opponents. Then you have to get out a giant flag/your scarf and wave it around at the command of your section leader, who also starts the chants. It's all typical soccer behavior from then on out (booing at the refs, hugging everyone around you when your team scores, spilling red bull over the railing when you're ticked off, etc.).

I had been eager to learn some obscene football chants, but the only thing I could actually understand was in English and pretty stupid.

Because this was a crosstown game and there were so many opposing fans in the stadium, the militsia was on hand to empy the stands section by section. We were next to last, before the Dinamo fans.

The game was only marginally more entertaining than the last game, but since I come from a long tradition of solidly mediocre teams, I'm more than happy with this result.