WEIRD PLACES - TRANSNISTRIA

[Sebastianus Rex]

I will start this series which I decided to call "Weird Places" with Transnistria, the country that doesn't exist !

Became suddently talked about in the Media this week because of the football club Sheriff Tiraspol who shocked everyone by winning at the stadium of Real Madrid for the European Champions League group stage.

Transnistria officially belongs to Moldova...but it seems that de facto it is not quite so.

Get ready for a time travel to the mighty Soviet Union !

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria

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[Tooting Carmen]

Yes it's been a constant problem for Moldova practically since independence.

[Sebastianus Rex]

How did Sheriff Tiraspol became a club capable of qualifying to the UEFA Champions League being from such a poor/backward pseudo-state ?

An article featuring the testimony of a Portuguese footballer (José Coelho) who represented the club a few years ago:

Original article in Portuguese:
https://maisfutebol.iol.pt/reportage...uem-quer-saber

Translated into english:

"Sheriff, a club making history... in a country where no one wants to know

Europe opens its mouth in amazement at what is happening in Tiraspol, in a region that proclaimed itself independent in 1990 and has since had Moldova with its back turned to it. José Coelho guides us on this journey through a city that stopped in the 80s and where the most unlikely things still happen.

Jurnal (Moldovan newspaper) dedicated only a one-paragraph piece to the victory at Madrid. More space was in fact spent in another story about the Luxembourger who scored the winning goal: «The Sheriff's hero has already been caught in an alcoholic coma at the wheel! The police were speechless», can be read in the title.

The IPN news agency carried a three-paragraph story, the Timpul newspaper was the only one that gave it first-screen honors, although it also spent no more than three paragraphs talking about the historic achievement, Expresul was nothing to be seen: it preferred to highlight a women's football story.

Sheriff's victory at the Santiago Bernabéu was just the last, and without a doubt the most improbable, by a club that knows no boundaries: before that they had already eliminated Red Star and Dinamo Zagreb, and had already beaten Shakhtar Donetsk in first journey.

The team therefore challenges logic, game after game, in one of those narratives that feed the belief that anything is possible. In football, in the world, in life. Nothing is impossible.

Now this story would have everything to be a fairy tale, if there was someone available to write it. The truth is that in native Moldova, at least, there seems to be none.

«The Sheriff is highlighted more quickly in the Russian press than in the Moldovan press», tells José Coelho, a player for Aliados de Lordelo, to Maisfutebol, recalling the years he played for the Tiraspol club.

Which is, in fact, true. The Moldovan press gives minimal prominence to the Sheriff's epic.

Why? Because the Sheriff is everything Moldova doesn't want him to be: a very rich club, in the poorest country in Europe, that feeds on money that no one doubts is dirty. A club still from a region that proclaimed itself independent in 1990 and lives on the fringes of the country.

To begin with, it must be said that the Sheriff is from Tiraspol, the capital of Transnistria, a region embedded in Moldova's border with Ukraine. Historically, Transnistria was close to the Soviet Union, while the rest of Moldova was close to Romania.

So much so that in Moldova they speak a sort of Romanian and in Transnistria they speak Russian.

In 1940, however, the two territories were annexed by Stalin as the Soviet Republic of Moldova. Soviet rule lasted fifty years, until the fall of the regime in 1990. At that time Moldova declared independence, Transnistria opened a war that lasted a few months and ended with the declaration of independence, not recognized by any UN country.

Transnistria is, therefore, a country that does not exist. But it is in fact a country: it has a flag, with hammer and sickle, a government, an assembly, an army, its own language and currency.

«Saying that Transnistria lives in the 1980s is perhaps too nice», says José Coelho.

“It's a pure communist regime, with clear links to Russia, the architecture is from the Soviet Union, there are lots of Putin billboards, statues of Lenin everywhere, lots of Russian flags. Moldova speaks a language similar to Romanian, in Transnistria Russian is spoken. In Moldova there is a currency and in Transnistria it is the ruble. There are Russian soldiers everywhere ensuring order.”

In the poorest country in Europe, where the average salary is just over 200 euros, Transnistria is a special case: even poorer, more backward, more oppressed.

“Tiraspol is one of those Russian entries into the European Union and lives in a regime that I don't know anywhere else, and I've lived in many countries. To enter Tiraspol we have to pass two checkpoints», adds José Coelho.

“We landed in Chisinau, for example. Then to enter Transnistria we have to pass the first checkpoint of the Republic of Moldova and then we have to pass a second checkpoint of Transnistria itself, which is controlled by Russian soldiers. And these are real checkpoints, where you have to show your passport, it's searched, the car is searched. All cars stop. Even taxis.”

It was in this reality, from a country within a country, that the Sheriff was born.

A unique club, founded in 1997 by two former KGB commanders and which has since won 19 Moldovan champion titles out of a possible 21. One of those founders, Viktor Gusan, still owns the club. But it's much more than that.

Anatoly Dirun, director of the Tiraspol School of Political Studies, told France Press that "Viktor Gushan is the most influential person in Transnistria", adding that he controls the main leadership positions in the region, from parliament to the posts of prime minister and of the presidency.

«The city is controlled by him», summarizes José Coelho.

«Ten years ago, for example, there was no Coca-Cola, there was only Pepsi. Because Coca-Cola did not get his authorization to sell in the region.”

Viktor Gusan took advantage of the proximity of Russian regimes, which the role of KGB commander had given him, to take over several important companies in the wave of privatizations that followed the fall of the Soviet Union. They say that it did so by keeping competition away from other interested parties.

“Viktor Gusan has a very dismal criminal record, but if you go to our cemeteries you will find they are full of criminals. At the time we didn't track who killed who and yes, it wasn't very nice, but this is the reality of economic life,” Valery Litskay, former Foreign Minister of Transnistria, also told France Press.

After founding the company that would later give the club its name, Sheriff, with a star of the old sheriffs as its symbol, Viktor Gusan became the owner of several companies and grew rich. Today it exports caviar to the United States and Japan, textiles and construction materials throughout Europe, in addition to owning all the gas stations in the region, the only mobile network, the only supermarket chain, the media, anyway.

This monopoly was never without controversy, however. Foreign Policy says that much of Gusan's fortune is due to the smuggling of cigarettes, alcohol and weapons in the port of Odessa.

«The owner of the Sheriff doesn't leave Tiraspol anywhere. Or rather, in 2012 he only left to go to the Maldives, I don't know why. But he didn't go anywhere else, he was always covered with bodyguards, and his house had more lookout points than a fort. »

Right, right, in 1997, he founded the club, which quickly became a success story in Moldovan football. A team without rivals in the local championship.

«The Sheriff is the only really rich club in Moldova. Tiraspol is a dull, sad city that lives in the 80s. The Tiraspol Training Center is something you only see. Sporting or FC Porto, for example, are no better. In Portugal, only Benfica's match,” says Coelho.

«When I was at the club, in 2012, only the Tottenham Training Center, which was new, had an area comparable to that of the Sheriff. It's something truly frightening.”


The club also has three stadiums. A covered whole for winter play. Another one in which he plays domestic games. And a third, more recent, in the English style, just to play in European competitions. In addition, it has a hotel, restaurants, a clinic, twelve grass pitches, several synthetic pitches, gyms, swimming pools, in short.

“Then we left the complex and the city is extremely poor. It takes some stomach to handle it. Either we lived in that bubble that is the Internship Center, or if we thought that our life was not just football, it was already difficult to wake up in the morning.”

There are stories that José Coelho does not forget, by the way.

«One day I was leaving the Training Center and I found some kids who had left school. They asked me for money. They weren't beggars, they were children who were studying and were asking for money. I reached into my wallet and gave them a bill worth one or two euros. I told the kid it was to share it with everyone. The kid saw the note... and started to run away with it. The others started running after him, me screaming that it was for everyone and wondering what I had done, that if they caught him the others would undo him. For a euro or two. This moved me a lot », he says.

«Another thing, when we got there, they gave us a file to choose a car. We could choose a top-of-the-range Mercedes, whatever we wanted. There was everything. But we could only drive the car in Tiraspol. Why? They were stolen cars. In Tiraspol there was no problem, the owner of the club was in charge, but if we went out with him to other cities, he could be confiscated.”

José Coelho said that the conditions for the players were very good, but stresses that the requirement was also military. Each player had, for example, a weight determined by the club.

«You were told that your ideal weight was, let's imagine, 70 kilos. Every day they controlled you, if one day you weighed 70,1 kilos, they fined you 50 dollars. If the next day you were overweight again, they would fine you $100, and so on. João Pereira, who was there with me, was central, was physically strong and had to take a letter from the Federation saying that his ideal weight was 80 or 85 kilos.”

In addition, on game day, blood pressure for all players was measured in the morning. If it was high, the athlete was required to take the balloon test to rule out the presence of alcohol.

After all, this is a club with a very unique history, in an even more unusual country. What he has done in the Champions League is truly extraordinary, it goes beyond all logic and is a poem to the charm of football.

It is true that in Moldova nobody cares, a reader, in a comment to the three-paragraph news in the newspaper Timpul, said that "they are only foreigners bought with dirty money", but Europe cannot stop opening its mouth in amazement at such large numbers. made.

The Sheriff is giving us a lesson in geography, geopolitics... and football."

[Roy]

My friend visited this country as a tourist, she told me it is like a huge open-air museum of comunism. Everywhere some policemen followed her ...

[Faklon]

Moldova is a babushka doll country, the deeper you go, the more countries you find.

[Roy]

Moldova is a babushka doll country, the deeper you go, the more countries you find.

Why I can't thumb you up?

[Universe]

Why I can't thumb you up?

There's a limit. In 2-3 days you will be able to give thumbs up again.

[Jana]

I know some people who visited Moldova, and said Transnitria is an incredible shithole, while actual Moldova is a nice place with nice, welcoming people. They said, there's absolutely nothing to see in Transnitria and that it's boring as f***.
Just another failed proxy state living on handouts from Moscow and keeping Moldova in a fridge politically.

Hard to get in there and complete waste of time. Screw communism and Soviet Union.

[Roy]

There's a limit. In 2-3 days you will be able to give thumbs up again.

What was the point of introducing it>

[Sebastianus Rex]

Moldova is a babushka doll country, the deeper you go, the more countries you find.

Yes, I have a strong feeling that the former USSR will be an inexhaustible provider of my "WEIRD PLACES" series. Fascinating...