Review: FC Lokomotiv Moskva – Strømsgodset IF 15-0

 Picture: spiegel.de

Dear Readers, this isn’t a joke, or a match fixing scandal, but just a result of a friendly match between two top tier team !
Strømsgodset IF, the current Norwegian Title holder, faced FC Lokomotiv Moskva, a big gun of Russian football, few days ago in a friendly match in Spain, because the teams that are from cold Countries, whose Championships have a quite long winter break, usually have a part of their preseason or mid-season trainings in warmer places, such as Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, Turkey, UAE and Qatar, and often face eachother in training matches or competitions.

Strømsgodset IF was preparing its forthcoming Season in Estepona, Andalucía (south of Spain), while Lokomotiv Moskva was training for the second part of the Russian Championship in a place in the same area, so the Norwegians chose to organize a friendly match agains the Russians, but something went wrong in the Scandinavian organizational machine, that usually, according to stereotypes, should be quite efficient, and the Sunday match against Lokomotiv would have been the third in four days, because they had already faced Videoton (from Hungary, a 3-2 loss) on Thursday and CSKA Moscow on Sathurday (a 3-0 loss).
The Norwegian club tried to persuade the Russian one to delay the game of two day or to cancel it, but Lokomotiv refused, because they would have played another friendly match on the following Thursday, and didn’t want to revolutionize their planned training schedule.
The Godset (the nickname of the Norwegians) had to keep the given word, but just six professional players (Anders Gundersen (GK), Mounir Hamoud, Mathias Gjerstrøm, Thomas Lehne Olsen, Magnus Moldjord, Peter Kovacs) were able to play, the other ones being too tired o suffering “misterious” injuries or illness, so that they had to find few other footballers: first they tried to contact few local amateur teams, but the time wasn’t enough to call enough players (being amateurs, they probably had others thing to do in their lives), so that they had to thank their hotel, that loaned them few men from its staff, so that Strømsgodset IF finally fielded eight Spanish players that were amateurs or waiters.

The First Half wasn’t that bad, the Russian being “just” 5-0 up, considering that there was just a professional footballer in the defence, but during the Second Half, Ronny Deila, the Godset’s manager, had to make few substitutions, as it usually happens during preseason friendlies, so that not only three other Spanish waiters, but David Nielsen, the assistant manager (37, he was a decent striker in Danish Superliga, first tier, and English Championship, second tier), Ronny Deila himself (he’s “just” 38 and is a former defender of Odd Grenland, Viking and Stromgodset) and a Swedish spectator had to enter into the pitch.
The Russians instead fielded their best line-up and were 15-0 up (5 Dame Ndoye, 4 Maxim Grigoriev, 3 Roman Pavlyuchenko, Mbark Bossoufa,  Aleksandr Samedov, Aleksey Miranchuk) at 83th minute, when the referee showed mercy and whistled the end of the game few minutes in advance.
If we had known that before the match, we would have bet on a over 9.5 for sure !
Anyway this one can be seen as a not a very bad performance, considering that in 1974 the Godset was beaten away 0-11 by Liverpool F.C (the home leg ended 0-1) in the First Round of European Cup Winners’ Cup, and they probably fielded their best players !.

Please note the goal at 01:19, in which the central defender dribbles half of the Norwegian team.

Definetly, THIS IS THE FOOTBALL WE LIKE ! ! !