Passovotchka

Author:

By David Downing

Format:

Paperback

Availability:

Out of print. Try our second hand search facility.

Price:

£7.99 £7.19 (Save 10%)

Tagged with:

Football, European Teams, History and Politics of Sport, Moscow Dynamo

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Further Details

• Published: 5th Jun 2000
• ISBN: 0747548137
• Pages: 286
• Size: 197mm x 129mm

From Word of Sport:

Esoteric and entertaining account of Moscow Dynamo's post-war British tour which undermined the accepted notion that British football was the best in the world. Great misunderstandings arose which were inflamed by a xenophobic press corps but the football enthralled the British fan and bamboozled the players.

From the Publisher:

On 4 November 1945 a party from Moscow Dynamo Football Club travelled to Britain to play four matches against top British teams. They departed 33 days later, leaving a trail of controversy in their undefeated wake. On the pitch, the they played exciting football, displaying their technically superior strikers. Off the pitch, they were constantly involved in disputes with the FA, the British clubs, the match referees and the press.

With the Cold War not yet begun, everyone claimed to want to keep politics out of sport. But the Soviet authorities were clearly anxious that Dynamo's performance should reflect well on the State; and there were many in the British press eager to make political capital out of the controversy surrounding the tour.

Passavotchka contains a blow-by-blow account of the tour itself, a history of the Moscow Dynamo club, and a discussion of the state of British football at the end of the war. The result is both a vivid portrait of club football's early forays into the international arena and a fascinating picture of two cultures helplessly colliding.