documentary series about football and Russia

Kinopoisk launched the series “The Time of Spartak” – six episodes about how Oleg Romantsev created a football miracle, about how the miracle ended, about the people who became part of the miracle, and about the country that lived inside this miracle. And it, too, apparently ended. At the request of the Weekend, a longtime Spartak fan shares his impressions of the series and his memories of the outstanding team. Ivan Davydov.

Once upon a time, around about ten years ago, my friend and I, Spartak fans with considerable experience, were sitting in a bar and watching another match of the Russian championship. “Spartak” and some kind of misunderstanding. Zenit, CSKA, maybe even Lokomotiv. “Spartak” lost as expected and mediocrely. We expectedly (and talentedly, of course) used foul language. And a friend’s younger brother was hovering nearby. Everyone chose the moment to wedge themselves into the conversation, and finally delivered the decisive blow:

– What are you unhappy with? Your Spartak always plays something like this.

The blow is insidious and irresistible. Perhaps even Rinat Faizrakhmanovich Dasaev would not have taken such a person. The friend’s brother was young and right. And then we didn’t have Alexander Gorbachev’s series “The Time of Spartak” at hand, just to show it to the presumptuous teenager. Now it is.

March 20, 1991. Quarter finals of the European Cup. “Spartak” (Moscow) – “Real” (Madrid). Today it’s strange to see the names of these two clubs side by side, isn’t it? As if this is not a report on the game, but a drunken dream of a sad fan. But no, there was a game, and Spartak won it with a score of 3:1. And before that there were battles with Napoli, the fundamental confrontation between Kulkov and Maradona. This actually sounds like a bad joke from a former Twitterer. The fundamental confrontation between Vasily Pupkin and Kylian Mbappe. But our Vasya Kulkov then completely neutralized their vaunted Diego Armando. Diego Armando could not do anything against our Vasya. Well, of course, 26 fouls. How else could it be against him, after all, it’s Maradona.

I almost cried while watching. I had already forgotten that this happens. Such football, such Spartak, such nerves, such hopes.

The series (a joint project of Kinopoisk, Plus Studio and Stereotactic) was made according to the patterns of Western documentaries. A linear sequence of events, various experts in monotonous locations, newsreels, quotes, newspaper clippings… But it turned out to be something a little more interesting than just telling the story of one successful team that was no longer successful. But she didn’t stop being loved. There is something there that will force people to watch the film not only those who still haven’t forgotten how Tikhonov breaks through the left flank to put the irresistible one in the nineties. To whom? Who cares? We are Spartak, and you… Okay, the continuation of this chant is specific and not particularly suitable for a respectable publication.

Because this is not the team’s story. This is a story of hope. The hope that covered the country in the late eighties. Vague hope, difficult to describe, unwilling to be put into words, especially now when these words have faded like the pages of the newspaper “Soviet Sport” and are difficult to read. Perhaps such a story can no longer be written. But you can show it. What Alexander Gorbachev (idea, script), Eugenia Montagna Ibáñez (director) and many of their other colleagues did not without brilliance.

Hope, yes. The fact that instead of a state that has not been cannibalistic for a long time, just a gray, stuffy, dull state, there will be something else. Human life. Freedom. The notorious “forty varieties of sausage.” And football, which is like a fairy tale. This is all one thing, all are phenomena from the same series, all are attempts to at least somehow designate things unknown to the unlucky Soviet man, not given in experience.

Nikolai Petrovich Starostin, the founding father of Spartak, a GULAG survivor, a fanatic of his cause, a democrat and a romantic. Next to him is Konstantin Ivanovich Beskov, a brilliant coach, but at the same time an authoritarian leader, nickname is Barin. And he also comes from Dynamo. “Spartak” under Beskov shows excellent results, but there is no fire in the game, no freedom, no novelty, no what everyone now wants. And Starostin removes Beskov, and Romantsev comes.

Romantsev is one of the three main characters of the film. The film is about him. This is his time. In 1989, he became the head coach of Spartak, and in 2003 he finally left the team. This is the chronological framework of the series. This is about his rise, about his miracle, about his legend. Tough, honestly – after all, he is a difficult person and at times made, to put it mildly, controversial decisions.

Another hero is Spartak himself. Not just the people who make up the team, but the very case when the whole is not equal to the sum of its parts. When the whole is greater, when the whole creates a new quality and transforms people. And this is evident – not even according to the words of Andrei Tikhonov, Dmitry Alenichev or Yegor Titov, they are football players, after all, and not speakers (which, however, did not prevent Alenichev, our Olen, from working for some reason in the Federation Council). Not according to Sergei Gorlukovich, who generally has a difficult relationship with words. And in the eyes, which even now light up when they begin to remember how it was. It cannot be any other way with people who have become part of a miracle.

But all this would have left the film as a toy for aging fans, perhaps, if not for one more hero. Another hero is the country. Her hopes and the collapse of her hopes, her story, big and terrible – the putsch, the bloody Moscow autumn of 1993, gangster chaos, poverty… And football – like a painkiller, football – as an opportunity to forget and as a chance not to forget that there is a place for hopes Always.

The authors do not push the story, everything is dosed, and sometimes even very subtly. On the eve of the semi-finals of the Champions Cup of the 1990/1991 season, after that very unthinkable, but successful victory over Real, Spartak goes on a commercial tour to Japan. Gorbachev (Mikhail, not Alexander) needs to make a gesture of friendship, why not, among other things, boast about his football players. And it doesn’t occur to anyone that almost immediately after returning – thousands of kilometers and seven time zones later – a game with Olympique Marseille. Chance to reach the Cup final! To do something that no Soviet team had ever done before. And not a single Russian one after that, by the way.

But in Japan you can buy a cheap VCR. And this is more important. And those who were able to buy a VCR back then still remember it with aspiration. This, in general, is like about birthright and lentil stew, and it says more about the state of mind in the dying Union than any scientific works. We played with the French like sleepy flies and lost, of course.

The only pity is that there is no fourth hero in the film – the fan. It’s a shame, because “Spartak” has always been (and maybe even now remains) not just a team, but a symbiosis of the team and those for whom the team plays, which is not entirely understandable to an external person. There is no menacing football talk, no ordinary “hurts”, no great poetry of chants. Although the experts are Amir “Professor” Khuslyutdinov and Evgeniy Selemenev. If you understand who it is, you will understand my surprise. If you don’t understand, don’t worry, live in peace.

Only Yegor Titov somehow remembers the fans well and warmly in the series in connection with the Spartak – Torpedo-Luzhniki match in 1996. The most important game in which only a victory left our chances for the championship. Spartak lost 3:1. And won 4:3.

I even know one twenty-year-old fan who started turning gray right in front of the TV. In the process of viewing. I know him very well because it was me.

But this is no longer a story about “The Time of Spartak,” probably, but about our time, which has forgotten how to notice an ordinary person and has become accustomed to being afraid of him. Perhaps with good reason.

And instead of hopes now – oh, it’s better not to remember what is now instead of hopes. And instead of teams working miracles, there are departmental monsters pumped up with swamp gas. But they made a good movie, and thank you for that.

Look: “Kinopoisk”

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