From Russia without Love: The Zenit Experience

Our writer, Nick Harman, has written an account of his trip to Russia to watch the Europa League game between Liverpool and Zenit.

It was back in December when the Europa League knock-out stages draw pitted my beloved Liverpool with a tricky tie against Zenit St Petersburg from Russia.

With a back drop of racism and violence we decided to take the ‘risk’ and book the trip. When would we ever have a chance to visit Russia again we thought. It’s not as if it was on the radar for a romantic weekend away with the wife.

Cheap-ish flights were quickly booked. Out from Manchester, through Stockholm for a night and on to St Petersburg the following morning. Homebound was back through Copenhagen the day after the game.

The credit card took another whack with the news that you needed a visa to enter the former USSR capital, which at £115 a pop for what amounted to just over 24 hours on red soil.

All sorted and the date soon comes around. Day of our flight out and the North West of England feels more like Siberia than Russia will. Heavy snow, plummeting temperatures and driving wind give us a feel for the days ahead. The only worry being if our flight will depart on time.

A few beers and something to eat at the airport set us for our flight to a snowy Stockholm. The flight departed on time and on-board were several otherLiverpool fans on the way to the match. It’s funny how when you get talking to people how many different routes fans take to get to a Euro away game. Fans went through Stockholm, Berlin, Copenhagen, Helsinki and Zurich. Many outposts dotted around a gateway to the east, showing how dedicated supporters will do almost anything to follow their team.

Arrived in Stockholm on time, quick bus transfer to the Jumbo Hotel (Google it) and a night of beer and little sleep on a converted former jumbo jet but well worth the cheap-ish outlay for this hostile stop and a wonderful experience.

An early departure meant an early get up. 9.30am flight to St Petersburg and a three-hour time difference to Sweden awaited us. Smooth flight to a very cold Russia and we landed on time.

The idea was to get a taxi but after haggling for a few minutes with the Russian spiv at the taxi rank who wanted to charge us 2500 RUB (£50-ish), he was told what to do in no uncertain terms. The problem with Pulkovo Airport is that there is no direct transfer by train or bus. It was a short bus journey to the metro and then a train into the city.

We got on the bus and virtually had no idea where we were going. A kind Russian businessman offered his help in quite good English, so we took up his offer of assistance. It was a risk. Don’t trust anyone I was told, they’ll all try to rip you off but this guy was brilliant. Took us all the way on the metro to the stop near to the hotel.

The thing with Russian is that I can’t either understand a word they say and I can’t understand one word to read. In other countries we’ve visited I can grasp a few words and read a few more but Russian is virtually impossible.

It was now the afternoon of the game, so we checked into the hotel and handed over more roubles for the privilege of registering us into the country. Everything was filling forms in, maybe a lean back towards the country’s paranoid past with the west.

A nice bar was next to the hotel on the famous Nevsky Prospekt, so a few pre-match drinks were downed. It was Valentine’s Day, so the local couples were sharing a romantic candle lit dinner, perhaps thinking of events arranged on an SLS Dating Site later in the evening, as we cast our minds towards the game.

A taxi was ordered to take us to the ground between the four of us, which arrived on time. It was a 20 minute journey through the crazy St Petersburg traffic to reach the Petrovsky Stadium, home of Zenit. We were greeted with line after line of riot police which gave us a comfort factor as we walked towards the ground in freezing and quickly dipping temperatures.

The ground is on an island, so surrounded by water. With temperatures dropping towards -10 deg C, all the water was frozen solid. A local was telling me that fans sometimes walk across the frozen water to and from the ground.

About three body searches later and we were in the concourse surrounding the basic ground. A quick look inside the club shop and then off to get some food. The ground was a million miles away from the comfort of the English Premier League. If you loved corn on the cob you’d be happy because every other stall was selling this. The other food was a hot-dog type concoction along with a decent cup of coffee to keep the shivers at bay for a while.

Into the concrete terracing, with no roof and the temperatures continued to drop as the ground filled up to almost capacity, with around 350 Liverpool fans and mixture of travelling fans from England and Eastern European.

We were warned about Zenit being the ‘most racist club in Europe’ but we never seen or heard any gestures towards any of the black Liverpool players. Violence after the game was a different matter…

On a very poor pitch, probably damaged by the Baltic weather,Liverpool came away with a disappointing 2-0 defeat. The Zenit big money signing Hulk repaid a part of his fee by knocking in a stunning 25 yard drive into the top corner and within a few minutes the home side took a 2-0 lead after Liverpool failed to clear.

Pepe Reina made a couple of early excellent saves but Liverpool had their chances to score an away goal or two, with Luis Suarez the chief culprit in missing a couple of guilt edge chances.

The Zenit fans inside the ground were a credit to their club. Noisy and passionate, it was an experience to witness. The sight of hundreds of Russian lads removing their shirts after they scored their second was a sight to make you rub your eyes. This was in temperatures of -10 deg C don’t forget.

A huge riot police escort took us to the closest metro station and then suddenly left us to our own devices. We got the metro a few stops down towards our hotel but the lads who got off at the closer metro stop were ambushed by the hooligan element of Zenit and a few Liverpool fans, heavily outnumbered, took a beating.

By luck, we arrived back to our hotel and due to safety fears we stayed there and had a few beers to wind down the moody night.

Now the club Zenit will rightly praise themselves for the crowd operation around the ground with probably no arrests and no sign of violence but the scenes described to me by fellow Liverpoolfans on the metro was a throw back to the 70’s and 80’s over here in England. Bottles and knuckle dusters were the choice of weapons.

Now I don’t want to paint all Zenit fans in a bad light. The majority treated us very well and were quite welcoming. However, the hooligan minority is what we were all talking about on the way home.

The morning after the game gave us a few hours to explore the beautiful sites of the city before a taxi to the airport and a flight to Copenhagen and then on to Manchester.

We’d been to four countries and used five currencies in a little over two days. We arrived home cold and tired but still with enough energy left to round the trip off with a last few pints in the local.

Russia was a fantastic experience but the violence overshadowed this a little. The World Cup comes to this country in 2018, I just hope any visitors come home safe and sound.

All pictures were taken by the writer- Nick Harman.