Last football game of the year

Sunday night was the last professional football (soccer) game of the year. A friend from church works for the Novosibirsk team as a translator. Two of the players are Korean and he translates for them. This friend got a number of people in free for the last game. Novosibirsk are in the first division (which is one below the Premier League) in Russia. They actually finished 6th for the year, which is not very good.
The Novosibirsk team are simply called "Sibir" (Siberia in Russian). Novosibirsk sees itself as the unofficial capital of Siberia, but I think it is a bit funny that they call themselves Sibir when there are so many other professional teams in Siberia. Or maybe they are simply uncreative. The game was against none other than Krasnoyarsk, the city which I have spent a lot of time in before living here. They are called "Krasnoyarsk Metalurg." This too is kind of a boring name, being a reference to the fact that Krasnoyarsk has a big aluminium plant.

I decided to barrack for Krasnoyarsk, but was told by the people I was with "no, you can't do that!" That didn't stop this Aussie. I found it quite amusing that they took it so seriously that I could not barrack for the opposition.

By half time the score was 3-0 in Novosibirsk's favour. I could see that Krasnoyarsk had a very weak team. At the start of the second half Krasnoyarsk scored a goal. In their immense excitement the Krasnoyarsk fan club let off flares. This was quite amusing. Still the final score line was 4-1 to Novosibirsk.

Krasnoyarsk actually have the best Rugby team in the country, but that didn't help them on Sunday night.

I would estimate that the stadium has a capacity of around 10 000. There were probably around 3 000 people at the game. It is late in the season and getting cold now, so that would keep people away. Still, that is small for a city of 2 million. We don't realise how fanatical we are about our sport in Australia.

By this time of the year, I would expect that people would already be playing hockey in the streets. But people still seem to be playing soccer. I am not sure if the professional ice hockey season has started, so that could have something to do with it. Still, I would have to say that ice hockey is a lot more popular in Canada than in Russia.