Vysheyshaya Liga Match Preview 20th Round: Sunday, 2 August vs. FC Gorodeya

Well, it's that time folks- the preview I'd hoped never to have to write. Yes, this week, our team travels to play gubbins village outfit Gorodeya at their stadium. Casual readers of my speciously prolix waffle may have wondered why the seemingly harmless little club has attracted such loathing...the roots of that are in our home defeat to them earlier in the season. Kicking off under a beautiful Minsk rainbow at the Energetik stadium, unfortunately there was to be no pot of gold at full time for us. Yakshiboev, Mawatu, Tweh and Atemeng all blazed over or wide when well placed, whilst the visitors took the lead from their only attack of the opening half, through a nice finish from Andrey Sorokin. The second period was a brutal, staccato, mind numbing failure, with vinegar poured into the cut through Gorodeya's unwatchable blend of play-acting and bus-parking. A game that we should have won 4 or 5-1 was lost. It's been hard to view them in a kindly light since.

But, wait. Regulars will be shocked that this preview is quite positive on the gubbins village outfit. I'll explain why below.

Refining a Football Club

Gorodeya's sugar refinery, founders and funders of the football club

Gorodeya (Haradzea in the Belarusian spelling) is a small village of just over 4,000 souls, about sixty miles south-west of Minsk, travelling in the direction of Brest. It is dominated by a massive sugar refinery to the west of the settlement, which underpins the local economy, and which founded and owns the local football club. Gorodeya sugars are familiar all over Belarus and in neighbouring Russia, and recently the Chinese have been making encouraging noises about importing Belarusian sugar from this part of the country.

This place started as an agricultural hamlet in the sixteenth century. Although there's not too much to see- you know you're up against it when the fourth biggest tourist attraction is a sculpture of a bison ten kilometres away-it seems to be an old world place, with many wooden houses and small, traditional Catholic and Orthodox cathedrals; some of these old structures date back to the Tsar's time. Gorodeya was badly damaged in World War One and subsequently, after the Polish-Soviet skirmishes in the early 20s, found itself as a border town in Eastern Poland, before reverting to the Soviet Union in 1939, in the same way as Brest.

Bison : Ten Kilometres away

It's good to see these traditional wooden buildings surviving, as so many villages such as this were looted and burned to the ground, with their populace, by the Nazis in the 1941-44 period. (The Soviet Belarusian author Ades Adamovich wrote about these unimaginable horrors in his books The Khatyn Story and Out of the Fire in the 1970s, and co-wrote the screenplay with Elen Klimov for the almost unwatchable war epic Come and See in the 1980s). During the second war the town's entire Jewish population- over a thousand people or one in three of the population- were murdered within a year, by the Nazis.


Such bitter memories, suffering and tragedy cast a very long shadow. However, these days Gorodeya looks like a nice small place to visit for a day out from somewhere else; set in lovely countryside for a walk, and with enough in the village to detain you for at least an hour before the game. In the post-war and independence years this place re-built itself as an agricultural centre. Around the turn of the century, the directors of the Gorodeya Sugar refinery decided that it might be a good idea to found a football club. It was decided at the outset that the club colours should be white, reflecting the club's sugar origins, and green, the colour of the sugar beet grown to feed the factory.

Tentative steps were taken under the name Sukhkombinat (Sugar Co-Operative), before FC Gorodeya came into being as a team in the Minsk regional league in 2004. There has been steady progress since. The team, initially made up of workers from the plant, progressed through amateur football to the third tier of the national leagues in 2008; following promotion to the Pershaya Liga, as third tier champions, the club turned fully professional in 2011. This is their fifth season at the top level, following promotion as Pershaya Liga runners up in 2015. In the last three seasons, finishes of 7th, 7th and 9th have seen them establish themselves as a reliable mid-table side. This season's struggles are an uncharacteristic brush with relegation, a fate which has yet to befall this robust little club in sixteen years.

It's become a real institution in this part of the country, running football schools and an emerging youth system, embedding itself amongst kids across a wide area in central Belarus through outreach and help for those disadvantaged, and enjoys a really good support for such a small settlement. The raucous delight that greeted the late recent home win over Belshina was evidence of that. Gorodeya is just over half the size of Brechin, the smallest town in Scotland to have a football league club. I guess from the point of view of the club's staff and owners, in regard to the style of play, they will rightly feel that the end- survival- justifies the means. For them, five unbroken years in the Belarusian top flight is a remarkable success.

Summer sunshine and sprinklers at the Gorodeya stadium

A Season of Gubbins

Gorodeya have had a somewhat strange season. Having been humiliated last season by lower league Lokomotiv Gomel in the cup, they didn't kick off until the league started in late March. A couple of narrow defeats opened the campaign against Vitebsk and Shahktyor, before a run of three successive 1-0 victories; a lucky one against Belshina in Bobruisk, an even luckier one as discussed against ourselves, and a downright hilarious one at home against Sergei Gurenko's appalling Dinamo Minsk side. That was the game marked by the red carding of the dissolute Brazilian maverick Danilo, who was subsequently picture sitting on a log by the side of the pitch, bored out of his skull on his phone. Little wonder that Gurenko was soon given his jotters after this turgid defeat, and even smaller wonder that Danilo has moved to warmer climes in search of further red cards- he's at Limassol in Cyprus.

Danilo : log

The laughter has long since faced for Gorodeya, though. Since that lucky winning streak, they have only managed two further successes in their last fourteen outings- relegation form by any measure.   The nadir of this sequence was a waking-up-screaming-sweating-profusely nightmare against Aleksandr Brazevich's Smolevichi, who trounced Gorodeya 4-1; a similar scoreline in the return game at the Stroitel against Shahktyor well illustrated the huge gulf between the villagers, and the league's best teams. Although there have been some good recent moments, notably a 3-0 trouncing of Slutsk in the so-called "Sugar Derby", Gorodeya have been through a really tough couple of months.

Whispers that the sugar factory were struggling to fund the club and rumours of managerial pay cuts circulated a few weeks ago. Amusingly, after that, a counter-story trended stating that fresh funds had been made available by the owners to help the club out of a deepening relegation mire. Two of the bigger earners left; Milan Joksimović, the Serbian left back, had a dramatic last game in the home win over Belshina before leaving for FK Liepaja in Latvia; long standing captain Kirill Pavlyuchenko, who had been at Gorodeya for five seasons, moved on to try his luck with Slavia Mozyr.  These were the first inklings of a squad being re-shaped.   

Gorodeya line up for the first home game of the season against Shahktyor (0-2 loss)

A Gubbins Gallery of Rogues

Oleg Radushko has been Gorodeya's head coach since last June. The club has had a complicated recent relationship with the Belarusian under-21 side. Former manager Sergei Yaromko, who had been in charge for almost six years, left Gorodeya to take on the national 21s job last June; Radushko, who had been assistant to Yaromko, took the job a day later, moving in the opposite direction to his former club boss, and leaving a post as under-21 assistant. He started well as the club's head coach, guiding Gorodeya to a highest ever-finish of seventh, missing out on the top six by just a single point. This season, however, has been a difficult second album for the manager.

Gorodeya boss Oleg Radushko

Radushko, after a long playing career, learned his trade as assistant manager for four seasons at Neman Grodno, and then after that at Yaromko's side in Gorodeya. He's instinctively cautious, lining his team up in a 4-2-3-1 shape in an ideal scenario or, more recently as the squad has begun to shift around, in a defensive 4-4-2, the same shape favoured by Yuri Puntus at Torpedo.

Club captain, goalkeeper Igor Dovgyallo

Radushko is lucky to be able to call on the services of one of the best goalkeepers in the league, and one of the few Gorodeya players I'd love to see at Energetik. 35-year-old Igor Dovgyallo may be approaching "veteran" status but he's a reliable and consistent performer. Gorodeya have let thirty goals through this season but it is hard to remember many, if any, that the keeper was at fault for. His save in a one on one situation with Belshina's Leonid Kovel two weeks ago happened at a critical moment and typified the dogged stopper's season. An ever-present, Dovgyallo is one of the most recognisable of the current squad, enjoying a late career at the top level having spent most of his time in the second and third tiers in Belarus; he joined Dnepr Mogilev and then came to Gorodeya in 2018 when that club began to implode. The goalkeeper has recently taken on the club captaincy.

Kirill Pavlyuchenko left Gorodeya recently for Slavia Mozyr

Gorodeya's regular defence has had to be shuffled after the recent departures of Joksimović and Pavlyuchenko. Amongst the noteworthy regular performers are current Belarusian full international Aleksandr Poznyak, a centre half; he has however amassed four yellow cards after being booked in last week's murderously dull single goal reverse at Dinamo, so will have to sit our game out. His regular partner at centre-back is Semyon Shestilovski, another steady enough player who moved back and fourth like a shuttlecock in a long badminton rally between Dinamo and Gorodeya on repeated loans, before finally making the move permanent in 2018. Left back Dmitri Baiduk is another constant in Radushko's back four; he's a capable former under-21 player.

In the middle of the park, left-sided Denis Yaskovich is one of the defensive midfielders, sitting in front of the back four and breaking up play; he counts ourselves, Slavia and Torpedo amongst his former clubs. Yuri Volovik, now into his fifth season at Gorodeya, is his preferred partner in right defensive midfield. Even if you haven't seen Gorodeya this season, the last two paragraphs show just how firm a defensive foundation Oleg Radushko likes build his teams upon.

Recent signing from Lida, Yan Senkevich, in the colours of Belshina

Radushko is no Kuchuk, though, in that he actually sees the value of attacking. Gorodeya do have two or three players really worthy of watching. Technically, the club's top scorer is Yan Senkevich, who was signed three weeks ago having bagged ten from twelve starts with Lida in the second tier. Senkevich is only twenty five yet already has eight former clubs on his footballing CV, which can suggest a temperament problem to those wanting to sign him. However he seems to have fitted in well with his new manager's plans and has contributed two assists in his first two appearances for the club, and seems set to do well in sugar country if he can actually settle down and get a few appearances under his belt in one place.

Attacking midfielder Lazar Sajčić

Attackers that are just as dangerous but have a bit more experience are also available for Gorodeya. A stand out player for me has been the Serbian winger-cum-attacking midfielder Lazar Sajčić, a virtual ever-present with six goals to his name this term. Sajčić is nippy and direct, and a useful signing for Gorodeya from Ceske Budejovice in the Czech league. It was he who set up Andrei Sorokin to score his winner against us in April, with a fine run down our left and cross. The Russian Sergei Arkhipov, meanwhile, has the same number of goals as his Serb team-mate and works more as an out and out striker. He may have lost the family derby at Shahktyor recently (twin brother Artem turns out for the potash barons) but is enjoying a productive spell in Gorodeya on a season-loan from lowly Russian Premier League side FK Tambov.

Gorodeya may not be the world's most thrilling side to watch, but that's not to say they have poor players. It's quite a surprise to see them so low in the table; just a point ahead of FC Minsk, having played two games more. Oleg Radushko has problems in getting some kind of consistent winning run going, and will have identified this fixture as an ideal opportunity to put some daylight between the Sugar Boys and a pretty poor Minsk side. Pretty clearly, the club's owners sanctioned the signing of Senkevich and a re-shuffle of the squad to ensure that top league status is maintained. After this game Gorodeya face a free-hit trip to Borisov where BATE are developing an ominous momentum, before welcoming unpredictable Rukh to the village after the break for the presidential election. They will see this as a banker, then, with two difficult games ahead in the league, in August.

Russian Andrey Sorokin scored against us in April. 

What will also encourage Gorodeya is that they seem to be our "bogey team". We have not beaten Gorodeya since a narrow home victory over them in the Pershaya Liga back in 2015. Since then, Gorodeya have won four of our last five encounters in league and cup, with a solitary point from a goal-less draw last June at home being our only solace in this barren sequence of results. I think most Energetik fans would be delighted with a dreadfully boring game and a point this weekend.

So, I'm going to predict a 0-0 draw and leave it at that. We're the last game of the weekend and fully expect most English-speaking Belarusian fans to be taking a great interest in making dinner, or doing something infinitely more interesting like a thorough re-arrangement of their sock drawer, in preference to watching this. I hope that the coaches will have decided on a settled line up and will stick with it, come what may, for a few weeks. After an awful series of performances in recent weeks, some stability and calm is urgently needed by all associated with Energetik.

Jon Blackwood
Twitter: @DreadlocksGleb