First Vienna FC 1894

Space Invaders Against Sexism

First Vienna FC 1894 1 - 1 FC Lustenau 1907 (12:11:10)

Julian Harris of Gingers for Limpar becomes the latest big name to make his EFW debut:

When a local cab driver doesn't know the way to the ground, one may be forgiven for wondering exactly what game of football one has signed up to. In search of some lower division fun during a short excursion through Austria's capital, myself and three friends turned up our reverse-snobbish noses at the relative giants of Rapid and Austria Vienna, opting instead for the oldest club in the land - the boastfully-named First Vienna FC 1894. "The famous football team" as their equally-boastful fans sang throughout the game, along with a host of other songs - nearly all bellowed out in English.

"We are Vienna,

We are supporters,

We are mental

And we are mad..."

This was one of the more honest chants, the final line corroborated by other songs being sung to the tunes of Gary Glitter and the Addams Family ("...Vienna family, da-da-da-da, *STAMP* *STAMP*, da-da-da-da..."). It made for great amusement, also allowing four lagered-up English monoglots to join in the fun.

First Vienna's fans have to make their own amusement, you see. Lumbering at the bottom of the second division, it was immediately obvious that their side are as clueless as the cab driver who'd deliver us, via SatNav, to the wrong side of the ground (the side from where you can look down on the floodlit green, but can't actually get in).

Playing an extremely conventional and rigid 4-4-2, First Vienna were under the cosh from a more fluid, technically adept and organised Lustenau side straight from kick off. The home side defended with two banks of four, and regularly relied on the solid performance of their 'keeper, Kuru Bartolomej (who should be good, given the amount of practice he inevitably gets).

Somehow, however, First Vienna held on and the sides went in 0-0 at half time. We filtered out with the locals to stock up on more beer and emit the several pints consumed before the game. In the (men's) toilets there's a strange gallery of polemical stickers. One sticker depicts, from behind, three skin-heads in bomber jackets and Doc Martens taking a piss in a urinal, with something below about "die soziale national partei". I couldn't quite figure out if this was pro-Nazi or a, ahem, piss-take.

Another sticker was for the "anarchosyndikalistische" lot, or "students" as we now call them in the UK. Another sticker boldly declared: "Space Invaders Against Sexism". Too right.

In the second half Lustenau had the privilege of attacking the end nearest their 6 (six) travelling supporters. These half a dozen hardy lunatics spent the whole game isolated and drenched, standing and singing alone on the roofless stand opposite the home fans. I say "lunatics", but they use a slightly different word as a self-description, standing as they were behind a large banner reading "Freaks on Tour".

Just two minutes after the break the freaks were jumping for joy as their team sprung the offside trap, and the notably impressive winger Daniel Schopf made it 0-1. The home fans were briefly silenced, but hardly surprised, and before long were singing and stamping away as before.

One of First Vienna's many problems on the pitch is that they apparently have two "luxury" players upfront, yet have no ideas beyond hoofing it up to them as if they have the height of Duncan Fergusson and the work-rate of Carlos Tevez. They have neither, of course, so First were reduced to switching to a 4-3-3 with three attacking substitutions.

It hardly brought the game to light, but it did get them a bit higher up the pitch, and their endeavour was rewarded with just a few minutes to go by a very generous-looking penalty decision. Up stepped one of their "luxury players", centre forward Rade Djokic, to send the 'keeper the wrong way and level the scores.

As we jumped and punched the air and shouted "Vienna" it was hard not to be charmed by this club. Nick Hornby famously wrote how he fell in love with the Arsenal after a terribly scrappy 90 minutes of kick-and-rush at Highbury. The rubbish football was irrelevant; he wasn't after the faux-glamorous fare at Chelsea or Tottenham. He was after identity and belonging. You get both with First Vienna. All together now: "Yellow and blue are the colours, Football is the game..."

Pictures from the Official First Vienna FC 1894 website.

You can follow both Julian Harris and European Football Weekends on Twitter.

For more of Julian's work, make a beeline for his Gingers for Limpar blog.

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FC Zimbru

I'm feelin' glad Moldova

FC Zimbru Chişinău 3-1 Nistru Otaci

It's my great pleasure to welcome Michael Hudson of the Accidental Groundhopper Blog to EFW for his debut article. Anyone who travels six hours across Moldova for a game of football is immediately inducted into the EFW Hall of Fame:

On a good day you can get from Odessa to Chişinău, the capital city of Moldova, in around four hours. On the day we chose to travel it took us over six. The road was rutted, pot-holed and covered with falling snow. 'Quality and Comfort' said a sticker on the side of the bus, but my seat was stuck in a permanent half-recline and the air was so cold that nobody took their hat or gloves off. The driver had a black leather cap pulled down low over his sunglasses, a cigarette in one hand and a mobile phone permanently wedged in the other. "When I was in India," began a loud North American voice from the very back of the bus. At the border there was nothing except brown, ice-coated puddles, an emaciated dog and a concrete toilet block, where we paid the equivalent of 18p to urinate down a skittle-shaped hole in the ground. Four men in combat fatigues and fur hats watched over the queue from the inside of a jeep.

Welcome to Chişinău...

.....the largest transportation hub in Moldova.

Chişinău's no Prague. The city was hit by an earthquake in 1940 and most of what was left standing was soon flattened by one or other of the German, Romanian or Soviet armies. We covered the sights in an afternoon: stone statues and glass casinos, rubble and squash courts where Moldova once held Scotland to a 1-1 draw, an Orthodox cathedral and a smallish arch built to celebrate a dead Tsar's victory over the Turks. We ended up watching the Premier League on a big screen in the Carlsberg Pub on Bucuresti, which had a nylon England flag hanging from the ceiling and a Tranmere Rovers fan at a table upstairs. Several beers later we decided it would be a good idea to attempt the forty-five minute walk back to the hotel. We only made it as far as the Hotel National before getting stopped by the police. "Passports," one said in Russian, sliding his leg out of the car door. As we handed them over disappointment slowly clouded his face. "Where are your girls?" he asked, changing tack. "What have you been drinking? Why aren't you drunk?" He closed the passports and put them in his pocket. "How about we go for a drink?" We laughed, nervously. "But you're driving, aren't you?" "Not tomorrow we're not," pointing at his partner, who'd got out of the car and was standing with his arms folded across his chest. "We're busy then." "Doing what?" "Erm, we're watching Zimbru against Otaci." He stared at each of us in turn, exchanged a look with his partner, and handed back the passports with only half a smile.

It's no surprise they didn't fancy tagging along. You wouldn't have called FC Zimbru Chişinău versus Nistru Otaci the match of the day in Moldova, let alone the rest of Europe. Zimbru won eight of the first nine Divizia Naţională titles after Moldovan independence, before Sheriff, the second largest company in the breakaway territory of Transnistria, started bankrolling FC Sheriff Tiraspol. Zimbru hadn't managed as much as second place ever since and were way down in sixth before kick-off against Otaci, a small-town team from the far north of the country who were unsurprisingly bottom of the league. "You do know the game's on at the small ground?" asked the elderly woman who sold us our 10 Lei (50p) tickets. There was snow all over the new national stadium, so the game had been moved to a training pitch around the back. With an hour to go until the game kicked off we retreated to a sports bar just across the road. When we left, everyone else stayed behind to watch Rubin Kazan play CSKA Moscow in the Russian Super Cup.

Snow joke. The Zimbru Stadium was covered in the stuff. (Nb snow not pictured).

Several hundred flats overlooking the ground. Tick.

There were only a few hundred people in the temporary stands and most of those who spoke English soon found their way towards our seats. "You will laugh when you hear how much these players earn," said a man in a ski hat and football boots who'd just grabbed my shoulder and told me to call him Victor. "Can you imagine only $400 a month? No, you can't! And do you see the man eight along on the bench? He was the top striker in 2008 but he likes women and casinos too much." "Who's the best player now?" we asked, and two people behind us laughed out loud in reply.

As Otaci had travelled without a goalkeeper, a reserve defender had been forced to play there instead. The top he'd been given was at least one size too big, his gloves were so small he took them off before half time and whenever he made a save the crowd burst out laughing while Zimbru's players stomped on the ground in disgust. "He was playing in the first team before," Victor told me, "but then they bought the two Africans. They're here for three games. It's a kind of corruption." Neither of the foreigners was half as good as Zimbru's number nine. "Who's he?" I asked Victor. "Nobody."

There wasn't much of an atmosphere beyond a few dozen fans chanting 'Zim-bru Ki-shi-nau, Zimbru Ki-shi-nau' on the other side of the pitch. By half-time even they'd got bored and started throwing snowballs at each other instead. Deciding against Victor's offer of lemon tea and half a slice of processed cheese, I spent the interval in the toilets attempting to ward off frostbite with the aid of a malfunctioning hand-dryer.

A lemon tea and half a slice of processed cheese please treacle.

Hats o'clock.

Two-one up at the break, Zimbru finally brought on their casino-loving striker midway through the second half. He jogged around for a few minutes, did nothing at all for the next twenty, and then scored with a tap-in right on full-time. Zimbru's third goal had come five minutes earlier, by which time half the crowd, including Victor, had already left. "Moldovan football," he laughed. "Once is enough."

You can follow both European Football Weekends and Michael Hudson on Twitter.

For more of Michael's work head over to the excellent Accidental Groundhopper Blog.

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In Bed With Maradona

IBWM Meets EFW

Towards the end of last week - I helped myself to several large glass of Leffe, and had a chat to David Hartrick from In Bed With Maradona. IBWM is, without question, the best football blog going. They don't want to read about the finer points of Didier Drogba's game any more than the next man. IBWM has initiative writers who've taken the world of football blogging to dizzying new heights - it's a juggernaut that I want to hitch a ride on.

So you can follow him and them on Twitter, and you can read about the time when EFW got into bed with Maradona right HERE. I hope you enjoy it, I did, immensely.