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Blood and Circuses: A Football Journey Through Europe’s Rebel Republics
In the last decade of the twentieth century, Eastern Europe was plunged into chaos following the disintegration of the Soviet and Yugoslav regimes. Politicians who had once jostled for power on the periphery of the Communist world suddenly became engaged in bloody campaigns as military frontiers sprang up across the region and new nations attempted to assert themselves.
Journalist Robert O’Connor follows those peoples for whom sovereignty and freedom have come at the highest price, telling their stories from the perspective of the ultimate laboratory of social science, the football pitch. For these communities, football has been used both as an act of resistance and as an act of rebuilding.
In Blood and Circuses, O’Connor embarks on an odyssey through the conflict zones of Eastern Europe’s rebel republics to investigate the role that football has played in the bloody inter-ethnic wars in eight of the region’s disputed territories. He discovers how in this part of the world the beautiful game has served as a platform for the expression of identity and an outlet through which to escape the hail of bullets and the iron fist of repression.
Journalist Robert O’Connor follows those peoples for whom sovereignty and freedom have come at the highest price, telling their stories from the perspective of the ultimate laboratory of social science, the football pitch. For these communities, football has been used both as an act of resistance and as an act of rebuilding.
In Blood and Circuses, O’Connor embarks on an odyssey through the conflict zones of Eastern Europe’s rebel republics to investigate the role that football has played in the bloody inter-ethnic wars in eight of the region’s disputed territories. He discovers how in this part of the world the beautiful game has served as a platform for the expression of identity and an outlet through which to escape the hail of bullets and the iron fist of repression.
320 pages, Hardcover
Published April 28, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 17, 2021
(This review was first published by Soccer America)
When the Soviet Union, its republics and its satellite states all succumbed to capitalism in the early 1990s, few were sorry to see the back of dictatorship, chronic corruption, environmental degradation, and the mass suppression of dissent via ruthless state security. While the west cheered from afar, though, there was precious little to fill the vacuum besides more autocratic politicians and kleptocratic individuals, catalyzed by vulture capitalism. Meanwhile, violent nationalists re-lit the flames of dormant ethnic conflicts to trigger death, dispossession and displacement all the way from the Balkan states to central Asia.
None of this, needless to say, was of much benefit to the region’s soccer. Storied teams were deprived of state support and had to rely on investment from the dubious new breed of often oil-enriched benefactor. Or, they went bust. The best players were cherry-picked by wealthy western clubs. Breakaway countries and regions formed breakaway leagues, none of which boasted the depth and caliber of the Soviet and Yugoslav top flights. The days of disciplined, technically strong clubs like Steaua Bucharest (1986) and Red Star Belgrade (1991) lifting the European Cup with a base of homegrown talent were soon over. These days, domestic leagues in front of paltry crowds are dominated by those clubs lucky enough to attract corporate investment and to have grabbed a wobbly stool at the bottom end of the Champions League trough.
That’s a two-paragraph summary that fails to do what Robert O’Connor’s probing, adventurous, conscientiously researched and thoroughly absorbing book manages from start to finish – to travel in person to the zones where soccer’s been broken, to revive its fragmented history, and to try and talk to the people who were there, or who are currently struggling to make it work. He focuses on five areas where conflict has left permanent scars both on the soccer landscape and the often grey, ruptured and ice-clad cities clawing at the fading recall of glories past. A significant few of his interviewees are not wholly without nostalgia for the Soviet era of relative stability.
O’Connor examines the following territories: Kosovo, a country now recognized by UEFA but not by the United Nations, and its bloody split from the former Yugoslavia; the Armenian-controlled enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, bang in the middle of the country they fought for it – Azerbaijan; Georgia and the Russian-backed region of Abkhazia which broke away from Georgia following another violent conflict; Moldova and its disputed Transnistria region (also backed by Russia); and finally, the Donetsk region of Ukraine, now annexed from Kiev and yet another ‘autonomous’ zone reliant on material and political backing from Moscow.
Champions League regular and this season's Europa League semifinalist Shakhtar Donetsk now play in exile, while its $500 million Donbass Arena Stadium, host to five games at the 2012 European Championships, sits unused since 2014. It’s one of several examples in the book showing how a club's identity is locked into the region, the industry (in this case, mining), and the people who built it and sustained it. Shakthar is now owned and bankrolled by the oligarch Rinat Akhmetov. The club, exiled first in faraway Lviv and now in the city of Kharkiv, remains in perpetual limbo, while its fans in Donetsk are "in pain", according to the club's former press secretary. Without any kind of political solution in sight to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, it's hard to foresee when the team will return or how long it can survive when permanently on the road.
In Moldova, writes O’Connor, for most people “the dawn of capitalism meant dragging surplus useless junk from their unheated homes out into the streets to lay on improvised market stalls, with a hope that someone would be interested in buying it. Independence brought an almost instant rise in the rates of alcoholism, unemployment, poverty and suicide.” The decaying ramparts of a previously rotten system were justly removed, only to be replaced with guns, gangsters and flag-toting extremists. In the west, the political equivalent of the Premier League looked away and left the loudest and most violent to sort things out their own way. UEFA and its Champions League giants have never cared, and never will, that no one in Moldova watches the country's domestic league.
While examining the sorry state of soccer in Georgia, O’Connor notes that “history craves the stubbornness of certainty. The Enguri River - running along the Georgia-Abkhazia border] cuts between two versions of the same story. Neither is, nor could hope to be, as righteous as its foe.” You could apply that to soccer fans on opposite sides of a rivalry – an Arsenal and a Tottenham fan, say, whining about which side is treated worse by referees. Except that the rivalry is a sham, and the injustice is imagined and without real consequence. In Georgia, Moldova, Kosovo, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Ukraine, the righteousness against perceived foes has lead to bloodshed, misery and war, and there is every chance it will do so again in the future. Soccer is just one of the collateral casualties.
In his conclusion, the writer says that soccer “has served as a central narrative thread that ties the book together, although it may sometimes have featured in the periphery.” In fact that’s one of the book's several strengths, focusing on the geo-political context without which any study of sport is superficial and irrelevant. It’s the reason why, as O’Connor says, “football clubs in this part of the world will continue to survive on a wing and a prayer.” Much like everything else. It’s also a warning to the rest of us that weak and corrupt government, an absence of civic society and democratic institutions, combined with an unchallenged platform for blind nationalism and negative interference from, say, somewhere like the Kremlin, can be ultimately damaging and even deadly for large sections of the populace. When you wake up one day and find that your team has gone or its league has collapsed, it won’t be the only valuable thing in life that’s gone missing.
When the Soviet Union, its republics and its satellite states all succumbed to capitalism in the early 1990s, few were sorry to see the back of dictatorship, chronic corruption, environmental degradation, and the mass suppression of dissent via ruthless state security. While the west cheered from afar, though, there was precious little to fill the vacuum besides more autocratic politicians and kleptocratic individuals, catalyzed by vulture capitalism. Meanwhile, violent nationalists re-lit the flames of dormant ethnic conflicts to trigger death, dispossession and displacement all the way from the Balkan states to central Asia.
None of this, needless to say, was of much benefit to the region’s soccer. Storied teams were deprived of state support and had to rely on investment from the dubious new breed of often oil-enriched benefactor. Or, they went bust. The best players were cherry-picked by wealthy western clubs. Breakaway countries and regions formed breakaway leagues, none of which boasted the depth and caliber of the Soviet and Yugoslav top flights. The days of disciplined, technically strong clubs like Steaua Bucharest (1986) and Red Star Belgrade (1991) lifting the European Cup with a base of homegrown talent were soon over. These days, domestic leagues in front of paltry crowds are dominated by those clubs lucky enough to attract corporate investment and to have grabbed a wobbly stool at the bottom end of the Champions League trough.
That’s a two-paragraph summary that fails to do what Robert O’Connor’s probing, adventurous, conscientiously researched and thoroughly absorbing book manages from start to finish – to travel in person to the zones where soccer’s been broken, to revive its fragmented history, and to try and talk to the people who were there, or who are currently struggling to make it work. He focuses on five areas where conflict has left permanent scars both on the soccer landscape and the often grey, ruptured and ice-clad cities clawing at the fading recall of glories past. A significant few of his interviewees are not wholly without nostalgia for the Soviet era of relative stability.
O’Connor examines the following territories: Kosovo, a country now recognized by UEFA but not by the United Nations, and its bloody split from the former Yugoslavia; the Armenian-controlled enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, bang in the middle of the country they fought for it – Azerbaijan; Georgia and the Russian-backed region of Abkhazia which broke away from Georgia following another violent conflict; Moldova and its disputed Transnistria region (also backed by Russia); and finally, the Donetsk region of Ukraine, now annexed from Kiev and yet another ‘autonomous’ zone reliant on material and political backing from Moscow.
Champions League regular and this season's Europa League semifinalist Shakhtar Donetsk now play in exile, while its $500 million Donbass Arena Stadium, host to five games at the 2012 European Championships, sits unused since 2014. It’s one of several examples in the book showing how a club's identity is locked into the region, the industry (in this case, mining), and the people who built it and sustained it. Shakthar is now owned and bankrolled by the oligarch Rinat Akhmetov. The club, exiled first in faraway Lviv and now in the city of Kharkiv, remains in perpetual limbo, while its fans in Donetsk are "in pain", according to the club's former press secretary. Without any kind of political solution in sight to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, it's hard to foresee when the team will return or how long it can survive when permanently on the road.
In Moldova, writes O’Connor, for most people “the dawn of capitalism meant dragging surplus useless junk from their unheated homes out into the streets to lay on improvised market stalls, with a hope that someone would be interested in buying it. Independence brought an almost instant rise in the rates of alcoholism, unemployment, poverty and suicide.” The decaying ramparts of a previously rotten system were justly removed, only to be replaced with guns, gangsters and flag-toting extremists. In the west, the political equivalent of the Premier League looked away and left the loudest and most violent to sort things out their own way. UEFA and its Champions League giants have never cared, and never will, that no one in Moldova watches the country's domestic league.
While examining the sorry state of soccer in Georgia, O’Connor notes that “history craves the stubbornness of certainty. The Enguri River - running along the Georgia-Abkhazia border] cuts between two versions of the same story. Neither is, nor could hope to be, as righteous as its foe.” You could apply that to soccer fans on opposite sides of a rivalry – an Arsenal and a Tottenham fan, say, whining about which side is treated worse by referees. Except that the rivalry is a sham, and the injustice is imagined and without real consequence. In Georgia, Moldova, Kosovo, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Ukraine, the righteousness against perceived foes has lead to bloodshed, misery and war, and there is every chance it will do so again in the future. Soccer is just one of the collateral casualties.
In his conclusion, the writer says that soccer “has served as a central narrative thread that ties the book together, although it may sometimes have featured in the periphery.” In fact that’s one of the book's several strengths, focusing on the geo-political context without which any study of sport is superficial and irrelevant. It’s the reason why, as O’Connor says, “football clubs in this part of the world will continue to survive on a wing and a prayer.” Much like everything else. It’s also a warning to the rest of us that weak and corrupt government, an absence of civic society and democratic institutions, combined with an unchallenged platform for blind nationalism and negative interference from, say, somewhere like the Kremlin, can be ultimately damaging and even deadly for large sections of the populace. When you wake up one day and find that your team has gone or its league has collapsed, it won’t be the only valuable thing in life that’s gone missing.
April 17, 2021
This is such clumsy and closed minded writing, incendiary, using so many words were one might have done. I’ve read some of the other comments and reviews and I am quite shocked. I find this writing unbalanced, lacking respect and sometimes deeply offensive. Sometimes the trail of thought just disappears without resolution. Where is the editorial eye? It also doesn’t really know what it wants to be - a sort of journal of travel, smattered with politics and football where it suits. Stereotypical vanity project lacking true compass. There is a lot of research here but that’s all it is, lists of facts with some poetic responses crammed around the edges. Certainly not worth what I paid for it.
October 6, 2021
O'Connor chronicles the de facto states of Eastern Europe here through football with chapters on Kosovo, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Transnistria, and Donetsk. He speaks to former players in the regions, and looks at how the sport intertwines with politics. One of the main themes throughout all the chapters is how a vibrant sporting culture was largely wiped away with the establishment of the de facto states and subsequent conflicts, and that successive attempts to restart the game has not seen the same type of success. It is an interesting look at these regions, giving a ground-up look at how life is there today, and a good read for those looking at not just football, but separatist states in general.
May 7, 2020
gripping and important read with new information -and the guy can really write! i am not someone who cares about sport either - but the international, historical and political ramifications are really spot on ... highly recommend
March 14, 2022
An interesting but disjointed read
February 17, 2023
Interesting if sometimes depressing book about football in the old Eastern Bloc following the collapse of the old Soviet Union
July 20, 2020
Smashing work - there's so much I didn't know about Eastern Europe. We think of 'Europe' as being quite together and peaceful, and while these nations might not be 'at war' there is considerable discomfort in their political systems, often bringing things to a grinding stalemate. I couldn't care less about football - this book uses football as a lens through which to see these parts of the world. There are no doubt some interesting factoids and elements there if you do like football, but it's about the culture of it, not the sport, and above all, about how these people live. Plus it always seems cold.
December 31, 2024
The idea of using football to tour some of Europe's more out of the way places - Kosovo, Donetsk, Abkhazia, Transdniester and Nagorno-Karabakh - is interesting, although ultimately there's not quite enough in it to keep things fresh across all five regions. The regions all have hard-up football federations trying to organise a league with no UEFA funding. Games are interrupted by army personnel or by war- players shield in shelled buildings on the way to league games, or join the army themselves, rarely with good results. There's stories from before the fall of communism of local sides reaching the Yugoslav or Soviet top flight, with resultant huge interest in the relevant cities, where there was probably little enough else of interest happening at the time. Without UEFA funding, the leagues are effectively social leagues, amateur events with no facilities - presumably UEFA funding is the only thing keeping many other leagues from being the same.
Two stories in particular stand out. One is the Kosovan whose life is saved during the Gjakova massacre because his Serb captor, in a moment of weakness, asked him what he did for a living and was told "Oleg Blokhin"; he was a footballer (who didn't know the word in Russian). The Serb said he couldn't kill a footballer, so instead he was going to shoot twice in the air, at which point the Kosovan was to collapse to the ground, wait ten minutes, then quietly get up and get out. "It is done", the Serb said moments later when his officer came to check on progress.
The other is the Azeri at a conference in Hungary who went down to the local Tesco, bought an axe, spent hours in his hotel room sharpening it, and then went into the room of an Armenian at the same conference and murdered him in cold blood. When arrested, he confessed, and said he was annoyed he hadn't gotten around to killing the other Armenian in attendance. Not surprisingly, he was jailed for life - but eight years later, he was extradited to Azerbaijan (for a lot of hush money), where he was immediately released, pardoned and paid eight years' back pay. The more wrong a society is in these sort of disputes, the more openly racist it tends to be, and this is about as clear an example as you're going to get of that.
Two stories in particular stand out. One is the Kosovan whose life is saved during the Gjakova massacre because his Serb captor, in a moment of weakness, asked him what he did for a living and was told "Oleg Blokhin"; he was a footballer (who didn't know the word in Russian). The Serb said he couldn't kill a footballer, so instead he was going to shoot twice in the air, at which point the Kosovan was to collapse to the ground, wait ten minutes, then quietly get up and get out. "It is done", the Serb said moments later when his officer came to check on progress.
The other is the Azeri at a conference in Hungary who went down to the local Tesco, bought an axe, spent hours in his hotel room sharpening it, and then went into the room of an Armenian at the same conference and murdered him in cold blood. When arrested, he confessed, and said he was annoyed he hadn't gotten around to killing the other Armenian in attendance. Not surprisingly, he was jailed for life - but eight years later, he was extradited to Azerbaijan (for a lot of hush money), where he was immediately released, pardoned and paid eight years' back pay. The more wrong a society is in these sort of disputes, the more openly racist it tends to be, and this is about as clear an example as you're going to get of that.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews