Vysheyshaya Liga Match Preview: 11th Round, May 31st 2020 vs Vitebsk

On Sunday at 1400 UK time our next game kicks off in our temporary home at Molodechno, with lowly Vitebsk the visitors. Vitebsk, tenth in the table, haven’t won in their last five games, and their games are rarely free-flowing, goal filled affairs; in the ten matches they have been involved in, only eighteen goals have been scored, with just four across their last three games against Shaktyor, Belshina and Dynamo Minsk.

Yet, the story is a bit more complicated than that. Sure, Vitebsk’s last few games really haven’t been easy on the eye. But they have some very dangerous players, and are more than capable of grinding out results against the bigger names. Their last win came in late April with a lone goal triumph over Dynamo Brest, who finished a bad tempered, appallingly refereed affair with nine men. Back then beating Dynamo Brest was a big deal- we all know better now.

Vitebsk is an important city in the history of Belarus and seems a very interesting place to visit. An important corner of European modernism in the arts lived and worked here in the early 1920s when Belarus was a daily-shifting entity during the Russian Civil War. The city’s history is littered with authors, architects, painters and engineers. Yet this rich patina of culture has yet to touch the city’s football team, founded in 1960 and enduring six decades of mediocrity, largely untroubled by success, since.

The last five seasons in the club’s history are pretty typical. In that period their highest finish in the top league was fourth, whilst they have had two near-fatal flirtations with the drop, finishing thirteenth last season, just a solitary point clear of the relegation play-off. They did, however, reach the final of the Belarusian cup, losing 0-2 comfortably, to Shaktyor.

Vitebsk head coach Sergei Yasinsky

Clubs with less patient owners may by now have dispensed with the services of head coach Sergei Yasinsky, who has been in charge at Vitebsk’s Central Sports Complex for the last five years. It’s not really clear what Vitebsk, who seem a very well supported club, would define as success. Yaskinsky is a very experienced coach, having been involved in Vitebsk football from his debut as a player in the 1983/84 season, and having also spent time in charge of Shaktyor and Tiraspol in Moldova. His current squad, captained by local boy and one club man Artem Skitaw, is a mix of Belarussians leavened by Ukrainians and Brazilians. Lead scorer Ion Nicolaescu is a full Moldovan international with seven caps. 

Looking across their season, their three wins have all been by a single goal: a towsy success against Gorodeya in the sleet in the season’s opening day, on an awful 3G pitch (presumably their stadium wasn’t quite ready, and it was good to see Kenilworth Road’s old concrete carpet still in action), an unconvincing success against poor Smolevichi, the goal coming from a free kick which eluded the home keeper’s crisp packet hands; and the aforementioned win over Dynamo. This last saw Brazilian attacking midfielder Diego become notorious, as his play-acting saw two Dynamo defenders sent off late on and a dubious resulting penalty that took the game.

The turning point in recent times for Vitebsk seems to have been a late collapse in a 2-3 home defeat to Slavia Mazyr. Leading 2-1, late on, Vitebsk conceded a stupid free kick that brought the equaliser, before a clumsy challenge in the box led to Slavia’s winner from the penalty spot.

After that, Yasinsky, much like George Graham at Spurs in the 90s, seems to have decided that defence is the root of all success. The three games since have been pretty grim viewing and just as uneven; Vitebsk gave a very good account of themselves against dangerous Shaktyor, shutting them out in a goalless draw at home, but they were very lucky to avoid being the first team to lose to Belshina Bobruisk this season. Last time out, Dynamo Minsk laid siege to their goal in the second half. They were too incompetent, however, to take advantage of the many opportunities they created, both goals having been scored early in a 1-1 draw.

Vitebsk captain Artem Skitaw

Vitebsk’s regular keeper in the last three games has been Dzimitry Huszchanka, who came into the side for the first time to replace Artem Sorko after the Slavia defeat. Both goalkeepers have been amongst the better in the league, making good saves and handling the ball well. In fairness, Vitebsk need good goalies as their back four is their weakness; porous, clumsy and having given away more than the odd silly goal this season. No. 6 Julio Cesar, a Brazilian who began his career in Corinthians’ youth set up, seems to know most what he is doing back there, alongside the experienced Skitaw, who normally features at right back.

However if their defence could do with shoring up, Vitebsk have many talented players in the middle of the park, and going forward. Ukrainian attacking midfielder Maksym Kalenchuk scored a divine lobbed goal against Slavia, one of the best pieces of technique I’ve seen in the league this season. Diego, the Brazilian attacking midfielder, drifts in and out of games, but his antics against Dynamo Brest show that he is a wind-up merchant and to be treated with great caution.

Top scorer Ion Nicolaescu

Ion Nicolaescu is their top scorer with four goals, and his equaliser in the last game against Dynamo Minsk showed a glimpse of how dangerous he can be. A ball was lofted towards the right touchline, into space, with Nicolaescu lurking. From nowhere he turned on the afterburners and left Dynamo defender Dominik Dinga looking as though he was running backwards. Starting five yards behind the hapless defender, Nicolaescu surged past him and hit a lofted shot from a difficult angle, at the edge of the area, over the advancing Plotnikov and into the net. Nicolaescu’s pace and technique had left the Dynamo defence looking very, very stupid.

So, although the table may show Vitebsk to be struggling a bit, the picture is a little more complicated. As for ourselves, we’ll have to contend with the loss of the league’s top scorer and our talisman. The “Yak” is out having picked up too many yellow cards and thus triggering an automatic one game suspension. The dilemma for coach Vladimir is how to replace him effectively to try and take advantage of Vitebsk’s string-vest back line.  It would seem that Yudchits and Bakić would be the likeliest pairing, but there may be a role for Atemeng and Umarov up front as well. Having not only survived but thrived since the departure of last season’s league top scorer, Ilya Shkurin, to CSKA Moscow, it’s a problem Vladimir is well used to solving.

We’ve won our last four matches and need to win this one as well, in order to go into the Minsk derby in good heart. Vitebsk, meanwhile, will see this as an opportunity to check an alarming winless run before a very difficult spell, which sees them take on BATE, Rukh and Torpedo in their next four fixtures.

As a result, this game is a bit more intriguing than many neutrals may realise. It’s a  chance for our team to show that our second place in the table is not only merited but represents a serious challenge to BATE; and further, that we can prosper without the Yak in the team. For these reasons this game has a lot more to it than meets the eye.

Molodechno awaits Vitebsk

Jon Blackwood, @JonBlackwood on Twitter

Vysheyshaya Liga Match Report: 10th Round, May 23rd 2020, Isloch 1 - Energetik 2

Saturday's game between two of the surprise teams in the top six, Isloch FC and our Energetik, took place in sunny conditions at Minsk's Traktor Stadium. In recent weeks Isloch have been plagued by coronavirus rumours that have never quite gone away; swirling whispers that several reserve players and some of the staff have it, but then it was also claimed that attacking wing-back, the Nigerian Godfrey Stephen, had been struck low. If he had, it didn't show during the game.

Energetik came into the game in good spirits after their win in Molodechno over Dynamo Brest. Coach Vladimir stuck with more or less the same players that had done so well in that game, with Umarov keeping his starting berth in midfield and the attacking force provided by Yakshiboev, Bakić and Yudchits.

This was a game played throughout at high tempo and intensity, with both clubs realising the importance of the fixture. The winners would go second behind leaders BATE in the table, with the losers forced to re-build a few places behind. Isloch, having slumped to a tepid defeat away to a poor Dynamo Minsk side in their last game, were perhaps more in need of the points than their visitors.

The game started as it meant to go on. Umarov, dropping his shoulder and bursting down the right touchline, sent over a cross-cum-shot at pace, that rattled the bar, with goalkeeper Hatkevich struggling to gather the ball. The rebound fell to Yakshiboev, but at too tight an angle for him to make anything of. With barely seven minutes on the clock, Godfrey Stephen twisted and turned inside our area and unleashed a murderous rising drive that crashed back off the bar and down on the goal line, with big Lesko completely beaten. The ball was hacked unconvincingly to safety. Very quickly, the game had established a frenetic tempo which only subsided with tiredness in the last ten minutes or so.

Conditions of high farce saw the scoring opened just after the quarter hour. Bakić, having received the ball in the area, crashed to the ground clutching his left shin. Replays showed that there had been no contact whatsoever with the Montenegrin forward and he was lucky not to be shown a yellow card for simulation. The referee bought the charade, however, and pointed to the spot. Energetik never lose when they score the first goal so the deep tinges of embarrassment at the award were soothed a bit by that thought. Yakshiboev buried a confident penalty low to Hatekvich's left, with the goalkeeper diving rightwards. 1-0 to Energetik.

Energetik had the chance to put a foot on the throat of the game half way through the first half. A careless Isloch throw in, half way inside their own half, saw the ball fall to one of their centre-halves who slipped and fell trying to control it. In a flash Yakshiboev, scenting blood, gathered the loose ball and sprinted into the area. It's often the case that a forward presented with a clear opportunity like this thinks of too many options and then does nothing.

Unfortunately, this is what happened. Yak tried to go wide of Hatkevich who had come out quickly from his goal; the Isloch keeper intervened brilliantly as the Uzbek tried to round him, pushing the ball away. Yak stumbled a bit, lost a few more yards, and looked up to see the formerly empty goal full of white shirts and the chance gone. He buried his face in the neck of his shirt in despair, but I credit Hatkevich with a great piece of work.   

Perhaps the referee realised his earlier mistake and wanted to make amends, as there's little other explanation for why Isloch were awarded their own penalty about five minutes after this Yakshiboev chance. Momo Yansane, the Guinean forward, burst at pace into our area with Yudchits at close quarters. I think Momo tried to line up a blockbuster shot, but he connected only with fresh air and, kicking high, crashed backwards to the ground. It was an absurd moment, like watching a Moulin Rouge novice fail her audition catastrophically. The referee supplied the punchline by pointing to the spot, again, having adjudged Yudchits of a foul that never was. Godfrey Stephen drilled the penalty hard and low to Lesko's left; the big keeper guessed right, but there was simply too much power on the ball for him to be able to stop it. 1-1.

The teams traded blows until half time but the level score was about right. Yakshiboev's failure to take that chance may have been playing a little on his mind, whilst Isloch, an uncharateristic mess at the back in the first half, headed in for what was no doubt a fire-and-brimstone sermon from coach Vitaly in their dressing room. The animated young gaffer had looked less than pleased at what he had seen in the first forty five minutes.

The game picked up where it had left off with Isloch perhaps having the better of the second half's opening exchanges. Awarded a free kick on fifty minutes, big centre half Papush hit an excellent low drive which was creeping in at our left hand post; Lesko made a fine, sprawling low save, parrying the ball to safety. A few minutes later Yansane, who had been largely anonymous, was played into our box on the right. He perhaps had more time than he realised, sending a hasty shot rising at Lesko's shoulder, with the startled keeper parrying. With several Isloch players choking for the ball to fall to them, we were lucky that it fell nowhere in particular, and was hacked clear.

After these scares Energetik began to shake off the lethargy of the break. Three wonderful chances were passed up; Yakshiboev found himself in space and time to the right of Hatkevich, but, surrounded by several white shirts, just couldn't get the ball out from under his feet, and a weak shot was blocked. Defender Svirepa was startled by a ball which landed with him from a corner, and spooned it over the bar when very well placed. Captain Alexey Nosko arrowed into the area and scraped a rising right foot shot across the face of goal, narrowly missing the top left corner, with Hatkevich exposed. After the latter chance was passed up, I think most Energetik fans would have settled from a point from a tough encounter.

This sense of being happy with a point heightened as our players wilted visibly in the last ten minutes or so. Nosko, the mainstay of our side, looked absolutely shattered. Several of our other lads were visibly gritting their teeth, hanging on as best they could. Isloch began to increase the pressure again; one of their forwards was booked for clumsy simulation, the referee having learned his lesson from the first half, whilst Lisovsky could have connected better when well placed, his harmless bumbler of a shot being gathered gratefully by Lesko, as Vitaly held his head in his hands in the home dugout.

And so the clock wound down and everyone began to think through their philosophical post-match postscripts, with a point in the bag. But wait, there's Yakshiboev with the ball in the middle, just the right side of the centre circle. He used his final joule of energy to shuffle the ball rightwards to Yudchits, who'd had a quiet game overall. Finding a burst of pace which few of us have seen his big frame reach before, the big no. 9 accelerated, like a double-decker trying to reach 50mph on a dual carriageway. He held off a clumsy and half-hearted challenge from Isloch's Adegbola. With the home defence retreating, and from about twenty five yards, Yudchits put the laces of his right boot through the ball and it hissed into the top left hand corner of Hatkevich's net, with the goalkeeper, caught out of position, motionless. The ball bounced back out, and the ground stood still for a second whilst everyone processed what had just happened. The big man had caught the ball absolutely perfectly.

Normally these kinds of late shots- more often than not- are the product of desperation, and test the integrity of the concrete wall behind the goal or, in the most severe cases, are last seen bouncing down platform 2 of the local railway station, never to be seen again. But this had gone in, and we'd won. The players disappeared into an ecstatic celebratory pyramid. There was barely time for the game to re-start before the referee blew for full time. Coach Vladimir allowed himself a little smile before remembering that he was on television, and quickly re-assuming his emotionless posture of granite-hewn impassivity.

This was a classic win, ground out of adversity, with the players working hard to conjure a late surprise. The team is making a real name for itself as having the spirit and the temperament to produce results when they don't look very likely. We came back from Slutsk with two engines smoking and a dead tail-gunner, but crucially, with three points. We strolled past Dynamo last weekend. And now, with this great win, the confidence of the players will be sky high; the vital ingredient of belief in the team prevailing no matter what the present circumstances may be.

This win leaves us a point behind BATE who have a much better goal difference than us. A Vitebsk side that has pulled up few trees in the league thus far are the next visitors to Molodechno. If we can win that game and then come back from the following league match away to a very impressive Shaktyor Soligorsk intact, then we will start to believe that our great start to the campaign has been more than just good luck, and may yet bring unexpected rewards.

Well done, lads.

Jon Blackwood, @JonBlackwood on Twitter

An Intoduction to Energetik-BGU, & the Belarusian Premier League

I must admit that I never expected to be writing about the Belarusian Premier League, but then those expectations are from the Before Times which now, painfully, are in a parallel universe to which we will never return.

When COVID-19 came along to wreck everything that had gone before, and open a portal into a new world that is still only at the very beginning of its formation, football was one of the earliest casualties. The last game I was physically at was on 7 March, when Montrose, on a long, impressive, gravity-defying run towards the Scottish League One play-offs, beat Stranraer 4-1 at Links Park. I had planned to take in a Highland League fixture at Lossiemouth on the 14th, but the games were are cancelled barely 24 hours before kick-off- part of the slow moving collapse of the Before Times life that we all still yearn for.

In the early days of "lockdown" football simply vanished into limbo. Links Park has been shuttered with everyone from tea ladies to playing staff put on furlough, as the club's board grapple with the huge existential problems lockdown poses for football. Fundraising pages were set up to help. Folk on social media chafed that football fans had the gall to still care about football in times of an unprecedented global emergency. Quickly it became apparent that this wouldn't be a brief hiatus- I don't expect to be back in a football ground until 2021/22, and have grave doubts that season 20/21 will happen at all at lower levels in Scotland. The economics of closed-doors football simply don't work at our level.

What then to do? The football fan was presented with two choices back in late March; trawl youtube and media channels for highlights of long forgotten matches from 25 years ago (I've no desire to re-visit one of the worst days on my football supporting life at Euro 96, thanks) or try desperately to find something to watch. And, at that point, the Which Belarusian Premier League Team Should You Support? online survey popped up in my twitter feed.

Before mid-March I could of course have named BATE, Belarus' serial champions, Dinamo Minsk and maybe, if I was locked in a dark cellar and tasered repeatedly, Shaktyor Soligorsk. I knew who Aleksandar Hleb was, having read a sobering article many years ago about how brutally his father made him train as a youngster, as well as having noticed him vaguely at Arsenal. I can remember Mark Hughes' Wales being humiliated in Minsk in their red kappa kits. That was about the sum total of my knowledge of the game in the country.

Fast forward two months and I'm watching four out of six games every weekend on the excellent youtube channel of the Belarus Football Federation, and am airily familiar with most teams and their better players. It's been great for discovering the geography of what often seems to be a historically invisible country, and some of it's eye-wateringly tragic history.

As will be obvious from the type of games that this blog once covered, i have an aversion to big, dominant teams, so i was never going to end up following BATE who have won the league an astonishing thirteen times since independence, and were (shockingly) unseated by Dynamo Brest last year. Brest, with a Czech-Scottish duo in the dugout, swaggered to last year's title, but since then have suffered rather from Blackburn Rovers syndrome. The coaches have gone, so have many of the title winning squad, and a maverick owner seems more intent on spending money and effort building up Rukh Brest, who he also owns (confused? never mind, they seem to do things differently in Brest). This season's Dynamo are already a pale imitation of last season's champions and no one is taking them very seriously anymore.

Other popular teams with UK fans have been Neman Grodno, who have an extraordinary shirt featuring diagonal green stripes on chrome yellow; it looks like a cross between a boiled sweet and a pillar at the now demolished Hacienda nightclub in Manchester. Grodno are a bit like Wales in the 1990s, built around one player; the lavishly gifted Armenian international Gegham Kadymyan. But somehow I wasn't persuaded by the charms of Neman and wanted to follow a team nearer to the capital.

Slutsk quickly attracted a worldwide fanbase of those who lament that Carry On! films are no longer politically correct. The fact that the town's pronunciation (Slee-ootsk) ruins the, er, "funny", matters little to those considering parting with £70 to cut about in a football top with I AM A SLUT written in player-name font on the back.   

There's a lot of strange flat-pack clubs too, as sides in the Belarusian league seem to have butterfly lives. FC Minsk- founded in 2006- and Isloch- a year later, are examples of these; they seem like vehicles for businessmen to indulge their passtimes. Isloch have a charming accordion-playing mascot and one of the league's more exciting forwards in the Guinean Momo Yansane. But they seem a little bought of the peg from IKEA and may disappear as quickly as they have appeared. Clubs such as Torpedo BelAZ of Zhodino and Belshina from Bobruisk have their roots in local factories; Torpedo's owners produce gigantic Soviet-designed mining trucks that seem to be the size of whole apartment blocks, whilst Belshina make tyres. I didn't ever really think about Slavia from Mozyr, Shaktyor or the village outfits, Gorodeya and Smolevichi.

That pretty much leaves Energetik-BGU, who are effectively Minsk's university team. The club was founded in 1996 and like almost all Belarusian clubs has been through several name changes. They play in a bold vitamin-supplement orange with purple insets, a colour combination little visited since this Scottish away top from the mid-90s. The badge looks like an egg timer with  quill pen and football on it. In terms of size, Energetik seem like Queen's Park in Glasgow or Edinburgh City in our capital. We are a small club, overshadowed by "bigger" city rivals, who don;t even consider us at all, let alone as rivals. The club runs on a shoestring, and is known for developing exciting young players and loanees from other clubs.

Energetik certainly have a maverick and unpredictable groups of players from all around the world; Uzbekistan, Brazil, Cameroon, France, Liberia, Montenegro, as well as locals and Russians.  It's a very young team and of course following such an inexperienced squad means wild swings in performance. Mostly Energetik have played much better than anyone expected this season. Having got them in the online survey mentioned above, I was completely sold when the "Students", as we are nicknamed, swatted aside a complacent and out of sorts BATE 3-1 in one of the season's early games, with Uzbek talisman Jasurbek "the Yak" Yakshiboev turning in a remarkable virtuoso performance. The Yak is powerful, quick and has a good touch, but seems very much to be a confidence player, and can struggle to make an impression when it's not his day. Recently he's developed a good understanding with no. 9 Evgeny Yudchits who holds the ball up well. An attempt to pair Yakshiboev with the giant Cameroonian forward Junior Atemeng unfortunately was unsuccessful, before that.

Other players that have stood out so far are the little Liberian midfielder David Tweh, diminutive in size but with a wonderful touch and turn; French wing-back-who-isn't-a-wing-back Jérémy Mawatu, and the captain and defensive midfielder, Aleksey Nosko. Nosko is the kind of player who wouldn't have looked out of place in a Stoke team managed by Tony Pulis; a full throated tackler who would leave a speeding combine harvester the worse for wear after a 100 mph, no backing down, two footed challenge. Goalkeeper Artur Lesko, one of the few experienced players in the team, and super-sub Shakhboz Umarov, a nippy and intelligent utility player who has recently forced his way into the starting line up, complete a cast of characters that it's hard not to warm to.

Energetik finished twelfth last season having been promoted from the second tier the season before, so currently sitting in the top three has been a major over-achievement to date. As well as the win over BATE, there have also been swaggering successes over FC Minsk and a remarkable, narrow 2-1 victory after a punishing siege in Slutsk. There have been a couple of lows, too, notably a dreadful performance in a 0-3 defeat away to Neman, and being on the wrong end of a home defeat to an awful Gorodeya side. Last time out, Energetik comfortably saw off a surprisingly feeble challenge from Dynamo Brest, who were flattered considerably by the final score of 2-1. Bafflingly, Belarusian clubs aren't allowed to play on synthetic pitches in May, for reasons no one has been able to explain, so this was the first of a few home games at Molodechno's rather nice stadium, 45 miles north-west of Minsk.  This leaves the club fourth, in advance of today's very important fixture against Isloch, who are three points and two places behind us in the table.

The standard in this league is very variable. The top teams- BATE particularly- could no doubt hold their own against most middle-ranking European clubs. Torpedo and Shaktyor also have a lot of potential for development. But teams at the bottom- notably Smolevichi, a very young side promoted last season- look like they'd struggle in the Cymru Premier. If there's maybe a wider spectrum of ability than there are in other top European leagues, it's been really gratifying to see that most teams are really attack minded and full of heart and running, even if it doesn't always quite work. 

Following Energetik has seen the development of a decent on-line community as well with good chat on twitter with other football obsessives who've fallen in with the Belarusian top flight. For those of us who have stuck with the Vysshaya Liga in spite of the blandishments of the ghostly no-fans Budesliga or the slow emergence of other competitions, plans are already being struck for a visit next year for a few games. COVID continues to have appalling and negative consequences for everyone's life, but there are small compensations. Getting to know a league, a country and a people definitely stands as one of the bigger consolations amidst the awful turn that the world has taken in 2020.

Jon Blackwood: @JonBlackwood on Twitter