Spartak Moscow v CSKA Moscow. 01/08/10

"That cheer must be for one of two reasons. Either somebody has scored or Vagner Love has broken his leg"

Spartak Moscow 1-2 CSKA Moscow. Luzhniki Stadium.
Sunday 01/08/10

The centrepiece of this eagerly anticipated trip to Russia alongside seeing the surreal sight of Vladimir Lenin's embalmed body was the Moscow derby. Spartak v CSKA at the Luzhniki Stadium. And to think we almost didn't make it!

For those not familiar with the locals vodka drinking technique and it's results, it goes something like this. You are given a bottle of vodka, quite large, which you drink out of shot glasses straight consuming one every two minutes. You can have an accompanying drink with it, such as a coke or lemonade, but to mix the two is heresy along the lines of punching Vladimir Putin in the groin. By the end of the evening, the aim is to have consumed one of these bottles all to yourself. If you aren't used to this it can lead to extreme intoxication which the Russian folk appear to be rather adept at in attempting to convince you you haven't paid for any of your drinks or food.

Drinking the Russian way

The bottle of vodka we consumed one each
of and the accompanying drink - some bizarre
lemonade

If you argue the point some burly security guards will arrive and attempt to get you to pay again by stopping you from leaving the restaurant. But thankfully the Russian police aren't as corrupt or as useless as they say, and they will often sort out the problem and send you on your way.

At which point you can then complicate things further by getting in a random car mistaking it for a taxi, handing the address of your hotel to the man in the drivers seat and making him take you there. He may stop several times and ask you to get out, but you'll have none of it, insisting he takes you. Being one of the countries hospitable folk, he will do and then look thoroughly confused when you give him a wad of cash for his troubles.

Smog from the forest fires made the city cloudy and even hotter

So that was the Saturday evening before the game. Quite an introduction to the Motherland. Sunday was game day and it was absolutely sweltering. Only we could pick the hottest summer in Russian history to visit Moscow with fires engulfing the countryside around the city and causing a smoke haze in it. Walk for a minute down the road and you were saturated in sweat. Even Rumble - a man who famously urinates once an hour - could go a day without visiting a bathroom as he lost so much fluid. It was so hot that you were really quite grateful for the bottles and cans of beer that were lobbed about on the escalator at the metro station outside the ground for cooling you down with their liquid.

Moscow Metro - a bit grander than the London Underground

You could spend all day on the Moscow Metro quite happily with it's stations covered in gold, marble and fine artwork and we very nearly did not being able to understand a word of cyrillic and there being absolutely no English. It wasn't hard to find the Luzhniki Stadium however - just follow the baying mob of fans with their flags and beers and you were there.

Lenin overlooks the outside of the Luzhniki

The place itself was huge. So big in fact that it wasn't even full for two of the cities four sides facing each other. Lenin remains a popular figure in these parts - I guess you have to be to have your dead body still on display nearly 90 years after you joined the great big Communist Party in the sky - and he has a giant statue outside the stadium. Inside it is pretty basic, a massive Soviet bowl complete with running track and big scoreboards at either end.

CSKA Moscow fans

Spartak Moscow fans

If you don't like fireworks, pyrotechnics or loud bangs then a Moscow derby probably isn't somewhere you should go. If there is one thing the Russians are good at other than vodka drinking and worshipping dictators, then it is being able to set off copious amounts of explosives in any given location. And on this occasion, it included the sort of banger you see over The Thames on New Years Eve in the row behind us.

The teams enter the Luzhniki

Just a few pyrotechnics from the Spartak fans

We were in with the home Spartak fans and they were a jolly bunch. When not letting off fireworks, there were scarves waved in the air, giant flags featuring octopuses, displays with cards and the obligatory monkey noises for CSKA's Vagner Love everytime he touched the ball. The Spartak fans at the other end gave as good as they got with their own displays and banners although they didn't quite manage to reach the racism levels of their opposite numbers.

The atmosphere was unlike anything I have ever experienced with the noise simply incredible. When Spartak took the lead through an own goal from Vasiliy Berezutski in the second half it felt like the ceiling was going to be lifted off the place and that was despite the fact there were just shy of 30,000 empty seats. If it had have been full to capacity, then the roof probably would have been a goner.

Paul the Octopus?

With things getting "pwaper noughtie" as Danny Dyer would have it, we decided the best thing to do was leave with five minutes remaining to avoid being caught up in what would probably have been an almighty scrum after the game. As we left, two loud roars in quick succession that could be heard the five minute walk away at the metro station meant one of two things - either Vagner Love had broken his leg and the fans were celebrating, or somebody had scored. Thankfully it turned out to be the latter as two late goals for CSKA justified the decision to get out of there before the end. Including one for Mr Love himself.

Entrance to the Kremlin

The wonderful Saint Basil's Cathedral

You can't go to Moscow and not see the sights so that is exactly what we did on the Monday after the game, walking around the Kremlin and visiting Saint Basil's Cathedral. The Cathedral is hard to describe, looking like something out of a Roald Dahl book but is absolutely magnificent. It's one of those buildings that you come across every now and again traveling that you could simply stand and look at for hours and not get bored of.

Lenin's Mausoleum

Having a lie down in Red Square

Lenin's Mausoleum is another, but unfortunately you can't stand around, take photos, talk or have your hands in your pockets. It is only open for three hours a day, three days a week but was well worth seeing even if to some people it is simply just walking down some steps, into a freezing cold room and around the body of a dead bloke.

Any country that classifies beer as a food source and so can sell it for 90p a pint in food courts in its large underground shopping centres at any time of day is fine by me. It worked out far cheaper to drink in their versions of Bluewater than it did in actual bars where the beer became overpriced for what it was. Particularly chocolate beer. But despite that, the fact we nearly got conned, arrested and blown up, Moscow was a fantastic place to visit. Just don't mention vodka to me ever again.

BOOM

That is some impressive water pressure 

Look away Chelsea fans - the spot where your Champions
League dreams ended in 2008

Spartak Moscow: Sergey Ignashevich, Fedor Kudryashov, Sergey Parshivlyuk, Martin Stranzl, Marek Suchy, Jano Ananidze, Ibson, Alex (Cristian Maidana), Aleksandr Zotov, Nikita Bazhenov (Ivan Saenko), Welliton.

CSKA Moscow: Igor Akinfeev, Aleksey Berezutski, Vasili Berezutski, Sergey Ignashevich 1, Georgi Schennikov, Keisuke Honda, Pavel Mamaev, Deividas Semberas, Zoran Tosic (Sekou Oliseh), Vagner Love 1 (Elvir Rahimic), Seydou Doumbia.

Attendance: 65,000

Unirea Urziceni v Glasgow Rangers. 04/11/09

"How could he think we are Scottish? We speak understandable English, don't drink Irn Bru, don't smell, don't wear skirts, have jobs and aren't off our faces on crack."

Unirea Urziceni 1-1 Glasgow Rangers. Steau Stadium.
Wednesday 04/11/09

There is a reason I never buy tickets from touts and this game summed up exactly why. You couldn't argue with the price - £10 to watch Champions League football even if it was between Romania and Scotland's champions. But the bloke doing the selling made a right pigs ear of things, sending three of us into the home end and giving me a ticket in with the Rangers fans.

This was not what I wanted. Forget the stringent security checks that meant showing passports and goodness knows what else to get into the away end. Forget the fact that at half time the fans were teargassed, ripped up seats and fought the police. I didn't want to be in there for one simple reason - I'm not bloody Scottish.

Stray dogs on the streets of Bucharest

Quite how the chap selling the tickets couldn't understand that is beyond me. We spoke understandable English, dressed well, clearly had jobs and weren't high on crack. Yet he still managed to get confused enough to send me in with the sweaties. It was quite clear I wasn't getting in through the turnstile into the home end given my ticket was in with the jocks but thankfully a steward ignored every single rule of ground safety and simply opened up the exit gate to let me in. That was at least one fan in the ground who didn't count towards the attendance then.

Unirea Urziceni had been forced to play their Champions League games 25 miles away from their home ground at Steaua Stadium, home of Steaua Bucharest and Romania's national team as their home ground only held 7,000 and fell short of UEFA's standards. As luck would have it, we were in Bucharest as part of a mammoth train trip from there through to Chisinau in Moldova and finally to Kiev, knocking off three countries in a week.

A working Trabant. Where can we get one?

If you can imagine the most horrible former Soviet place with bland concrete buildings and stray dogs roaming everywhere, then you have Bucharest. This impression probably wasn't helped by the fact that for the three days we were there it was solid rain adding to the grimness but it really was grey. If you measure a place in good places to drink, we only found a couple of them - one being the traditional set up in this part of the world of a tent in a park - but at least the beer was cheap and quite drinkable.

Nick absolutely delighted with the size of his hotdog

Steaua Stadium is far out of the city centre which meant a taxi ride to reach it. Once there, it was through one set of security checks to enter the car park where we found a hotdog even bigger than Hartlepool United's famous effort that is larger than a mans head, and then another security check to go through the turnstiles (unless of course you get let in an exit gate).

Steaua Stadium

A roof - not that it looked like it was much use

The stadium itself was three uncovered stands of red and blue seats and one main stand with a roof and some executive boxes. With the rain hammering down, it meant we were in for a very wet evening. It was like a Taylor Report devotees worst nightmare inside - yes, it may have been all seater but rather than sit on the seats, everybody stood on them. Perhaps an idea for a protest for safe standing in England?

Romania's finest entrepreneur sets up his table to sell cups
of Pepsi at half time

Buying from the hotdog stand outside proved to be a genius decision given there were no facilities in the ground to purchase anything from. Some enterprising locals showed the sort of initiative that will get you a long way in Dragons Den at half time by bringing their own bottles of Pepsi in and then selling cups of it from a small table. It was good to see the idea of capitalism, trade and entrepreneurship thriving in a former communist country.

Fun and games in the Rangers end at half time

The game itself was pretty woeful. Dan Petrescu prowled the sidelines in his role as Unirea manager but both sides seemed to treat it as an away game which I suppose technically it was. Those "home" fans who had made the journey to Bucharest weren't particularly impressed when Lee McCulloch gave Rangers the lead with less than 15 minutes remaining but an absolutely stunning strike from Marius Onofras with two minutes left earned them a 1-1 draw.

That was our cue to leave to avoid being stuck with the jocks in the ensuing rush which would probably turn nasty given what we'd seen at half time but we made a critical error in jumping in a taxi without negotiating the price first, which meant that the journey back to the city centre cost us a whopping six times what it had to get there. Ouch!

Romanian Palace of Parliament

As for the rest of the trip, Bucharest offered a few interesting sights the main one of which was the Palace of Parliament. Built by the countries former dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu, he bulldozed 30,000 residencies, 30 churches and six synagogues to create the heaviest building in the world featuring one million cubic metres of marble and 3500 tonnes of crystal. You really have to see it to appreciate just how big it is and it shows how much of a mental case Ceaucescu was to create such a monstrous building when his people were living in poverty.

Moldova's National Stadium in Chisinau - or not

We spent just a day in Chisinau which was just as well as there was little to do here other than drink and eat. So poor is Moldova that we were able to pick up a good bottle of champagne for £2.50 and after that it was onto Kiev, easily the best city of the trip.

Independence Square, Kiev

St Michael's Cathedral. Nice roof

While there we visited Independence Square, scene of 2004's Orange Revolution, the famous St Michael's Cathedral with it's gold domed roofs and after attempting to get a look at Lobanovsky Dynamo Stadium, we managed to bribe the security guard to the tune of £8 to let us enter and have a look at the home of Dynamo Kiev.

The grand entrance to Dynamo Staidum

Dynamo Stadium after bribing a security guard to let us in

Although dark, it's setting in the middle of a park was quite quaint and the floodlight pylons were a particular highlight, being massive things that reached into the sky, outdwarving the tiny stadium. It was oval shaped despite not having a running track and bizarrely didn't feature any sort of roof, not even over the main stand. The gates outside were more like Admiralty Arch than the entrance to a football stadium which made it seem rather grand. It would have been nice to see a game there, but not with a ticket bought from a tout. No sir, I've learnt my lesson on that one.

Unirea Urziceni: Giedrius Arlauskis, Valeriu Bordeanu, George Galamaz, Vasile Maftei, Iulian Apostol, Tiberiu Balan (Marius Onofras 1), Pablo Brandan, Sorin Frunza, Ricardo Gomes (Razvan Paduretu), Dacian Varga (Antonio Semedo), Marius Bilasco.

Glasgow Rangers: Allan McGregor, Sasa Papac, David Weir, Steven Whittaker, Danny Wilson, Steven Davis, Kevin Thomson (John Fleck), Lee McCulloch 1, Kyle Lafferty, Kenny Miller (Nacho Novo), Steven Naismith.

Attendance: 15,000.

Girondis de Bordeaux v Nice. 23/08/09

"I can't believe we've got to a game in France on two different types of public transported and not been disrupted by somebody on strike"

Girondia de Bordeaux 4-0 OGC Nice. Stade Chaban-Delmas.
Sunday 23/08/09

Bordeaux v Nice could be remembered for any number of things. Seeing the reigning French champions destroy their visitors 4-0. Laurent Blanc looking simply dashing in a pair of jeans in the technical area. The fact that you could get to the game on French public transport without encountering some sort of strike. But unfortunately, it will always stick in my mind for the unbearable heat.

Now I don't like heat at the best of times but this was something else. Admittedly, my cause probably wasn't helped by the insistence on wearing a beret to blend in with the locals (as it was, none of them had one on so I in fact blended out). But even so, just sitting there watching 22 men wander around at a leisurely pace was enough to have you sweating as if you were running a marathon inside an active volcano.

Bright sunshine, 30 degree heat. Still need the floodlights on

Every year I venture to Bordeaux to stay with college friend Dan, now a resident. Normally these trips come about in June or July but this time in order to catch some action at Stade Chaban-Delmas, the journey was made in August.

Monsieur Blanc's side won Ligue 1 last season to break the dominance of Lyon, winners for the previous seven seasons in a row. This was their first home game of 2009-2010 and their first as champions, taking on a Nice team who were frankly not very good, but then again on the day both sides could be forgiven for the snails pace the game took place at bearing in mind those of us in the stand could easily have claimed dehydration purely through perspiration.

Laurent Blanc doing his best impression of a beach goer

Part of the problem was the nature of Stade Chaban-Delmas. Sorry to geek things up but it is like the TARDIS - appears remarkably small on the outside yet is capable of holding 35,000. That is in part due to the fact you are crammed in like one of those Indian trains with people swinging from the rafters and the lack of space attributes to the lack of coolness.

Stade Chaban-Delmas main stand

The home fans ready to greet the champions

Another reason for the heat factor is the lack of shade, with minimal roofing behind both goals but both sides covered. It's a bizarre layout with the design being oval yet the vast spaces that leaves at the ends behind filled with banks of seats. At one of these ends comes most of the ground atmosphere courtesy of copious blue and white banners, flairs and all the usual other paraphernalia you get on the continent. For a nation best known for surrendering and not working, they made quite a noise.

Bordeaux free-kick

The game itself was a stroll for the champions once they'd scored a minute before half time through Jussie Ferreira Vieira. Yoann Gourcuff added a brace and Alou Diarra netted the fourth. Pre-game and post game was spent in a wonderful little bar just around the corner from the ground with a delightful owner we nicknamed Joan of Arc due to her resemblance to the French saint.

The Bordeaux goalkeepers kit was absolutely fantastic

As for Bordeaux itself, the best way to describe it is expensive.€7.50 for a pint is anything but ideal and in truth there were very few good places to drink if you wanted a beer and not wine. The Houses of Parliament was a decent enough pub even if it overdid the Englishness (could you tell from the name?!) while Byron Bay was an Australian themed bar that attracted a decent crowd as well as a few mentalists.

Smaller Arc De Triomphe - presumably the builders
went on strike

Price of a pint = ouch

As good as the sites got was the statue of a turtle and what appeared to be a half finished attempt to recreate the Arc de Triomphe which no doubt had never been finished due to industrial action on the part of the workers aggrieved at having to do more than an eight hour week.

The footballers on the other hand had more than earned their money after performing in that heat. It was certainly not conditions for football. Or wearing a beret.

Girondis de Bordeaux: Cedric Cassaro, Matthieu Chalme, Mickael Ciani, Marc Planus, Benoit Tremoulinas, Alou Diarra 1, Yoann Gourcuff 2, Wendel, Fernando Cavenaghi (Yoan Gouffran), Marouane Chamakh (David Bellion), Jussie 1 (Fernando).

Nice: David Ospina, Onyekachi Apam, Gerald Cid, Larrys Mabiala, Gregory Paisley (Drissa Diakite), Chaouki Ben Saada (Habib Bamongo), Olivier Echouafni (Mamadou Bagayoko), David Hellebuyck, Julien Sable, Mahamane Traore, Loic Remy.

Attendance: 32,065.

1860 Munich v Hansa Rostock. 08/05/09

"The 1860 drummer is amazing. He's like John Portsmouth FC Westwood. Just better smelling."

TSV 1860 Munich 3-3 FC Hansa Rostock. Allianz Arena.
Saturday 08/05/09.

There is more than one team in Munich, don't you know? While Bayern may be famous around the world, playing in their shadow in 2.Bundlesiga are city neighbours 1860. Originally named because they were founded in 1860, they used to be the cities big boys and were even German champions in the 1960s.

Hard times have followed though, mainly since the move into the vastness of the Allianz Arena took place and they struggle to even third fill one of the worlds finest footballing venues. They need all the help they can get and that is where a group of six upstanding males came in for the visit of Hansa Rostock FC.

Six steins in one go in Hofbrauhaus - was this woman perfect
wife material?

Of course, this wouldn't be German football without sinking a couple of pints before the game. And in Bavaria, these pints come in the shape of steins, two litres of wholesome family beer. We weren't quite as hardcore as those Hansa fans who were at the hotel bar doing shots at 8am in the morning but nonetheless a fair amount of beer was put away in the Augustiner Keller and the world famous Hofbrauhaus before the game.

The Allianz is about a 20 minute journey on the typically efficient U-Bahn service from the city centre. 30 minutes if you end up going the wrong way which is naturally what happened. The ground itself is in the middle of nowhere, a giant marshmallow surrounded by wasteland.

The giant abandoned car tyre that is The Allianz Arena

There is a shopping centre adjacent to the station which, this being Germany, features a bar where you can continue pre-game drinking right up until kick off. 1860 tickets are available on the door unlike their more illustrious rivals and despite requesting a place in the terrace, we ended up with tickets for the seats.

A large crowd in for the game

Or at least we were meant to. Given how sparse the 1860 support was, we were able to wander onto the terrace once inside the stadium with ease. And it was here we met all manner of weird and wonderful individuals. From the home fans drummer - a more pleasant smelling version of John Portsmouth FC Westwood - to people wearing full kit, it was a mixture of the sort of bizareness you'd struggle to find anywhere else.

When full, the Alianz must be an impressive place but on this occasion it was like a morgue. Nobody in the top tier, a splattering of people in the middle and even less in the bottom led to no atmosphere at all. It was like attending a funeral in Westminster Abbey in which just two people turn up.

Leading the Hansa Rostock fans in song

Hansa Rostock had made the journey in their hundreds

But that didn't effect the quality of the game in the slightest. In fact, it must rank as one of the most exciting games I've ever seen. Manuel Schaffler gave 1860 the lead, Enrico Kern and Mario Fillinger put Hansa 2-1 up before the break. Benjamin Lauth equalised with Kern netting his second for the visitors with 85 minutes on the clock. Game over? Oh no, a brilliant 93rd minute free kick from Sascha Rosler earning a point and sending the home fans wild.

Excellent choice of socks

And by wild, I mean throwing pints of beer over the segregation and into the away fans. Naturally, we had to sample everything German culture has to offer so this meant joining in and giving it large - before running away after realising that a group of English fans, one of whom wearing a bright yellow t-shirt with Mark McGhee's face on it - wouldn't exactly be hard to find for retribution later. Wimpish yes, but none of us are exactly Elijah Wood in Green Street.

1860's late equaliser delighted the home fans

The Allianz with it's famous chaning colour exterior goes blue
for 1860

Munich is one of those fantastic sporting cities with plenty to do and see, and we spent the next day at the Olympic Park wandering around and taking standard "5-1 poses". Unfortunately we couldn't get into the actual stadium as some noddy band called ACDC were setting up for a concert. Bloody inconsiderate, really.

5-1, even Heskey scored. Rumble enjoys the view over the
Olympic Stadium from the television tower

A giant snake about to attack the city of Munich?

Away from the bierkellers in the centre, we came across a vast complex on the edge of the city that was like an English industrial estate - think where The Office is based in Slough - but was just full of varying nightclubs. Including a gay one, as young Sam found to his cost when chatting up a woman who actually turned out to be a man. I even got some action when a burly man put his hands on my bottom, which is a very brave move given the combination of beer and german sausage was like letting Hiroshima off in my innards. You could arrive at this estate at 10pm and before you knew it it was 6am - as we found to our cost making the taxi ride of shame home with the sun up and the birds singing.

Josef Fritzl has recently found employment as a toilet attendant

Sam living the dream by dancing in a fountain to clear any
lingering hangover

Perhaps the most important lesson from this trip to Munich however came from the realisation of the ultimate way to sober up. The German way to sober up. Dancing in a fountain on the cities main street. It's not frowned upon, in fact it is fully encouraged. As Jeff Stelling would put it, they were dancing in the streets of 1860 Munich.

1860 Munich: Phillip Tschauner, Antonio Rukavina, Markus Thorandt (Sascha Rosler 1), Mate Gvinianidze, Torben Hoffman, Stefan Aigner (Nikolas Ledgerwood), Lars Bender (Danny Schwarz), Mathieu Beda, Fabian Johson, Manuel Schaffler 1, Benjamin Lauth 1. 

Hansa Rostock: Jorg Hahnel, Kevin Schoneberg, Orestes, Kai Bullow, Bastian Oczipka, Kevin Schindler, Martin Retov, Sebastian Svard, Mario Fillinger 1, Enrico Kern 2 (Gledson), Fin Bartels (Regis Dorn).

Attendance: 24,400.