Moscow Dynamo in Britain 1945
On 4 November 1945 a party from Moscow Dynamo Football Club travelled to Britain to play four matches against top British teams. They departed thirty-three days later, leaving a trail of controversy in their unbeaten wake. Nothing ran smoothly on this tour: the party delayed their arrival three times, then agonised over their date of departure; one match was played in dense fog; and a British manager followed the team across the country in a vain attempt to retrieve six "borrowed" footballs. And throughout, the Russians were involved in disputes with the FA, the British clubs, the match referees and the press. On the pitch, the Russians played exciting football, displaying their technically superior strikers. Off the pitch, a catalogue of misunderstandings and suspicions marked the team's progress around the country. With the Cold War not yet begun, Russia was still Britain's ally and everyone claimed to want to keep politics out of sport. But the Soviet authorities were clearly anxious that Dynamo's performance should reflect well on the State; and there were many in the British press eager to make political capital out of the controversy surrounding the tour.
'Passovotchka' contains a blow-by-blow account of the tour itself; a history of the Moscow Dynamo club, and a discussion of the state of British football at the end of the war. The result is both a vivid portrait of the club football's early forays into the international arena and a fascinating picture of two cultures helplessly colliding.
