Hand of God

3

Prometheus joined the team in St Petersburg. He was a tall, muscular boy with a big smile, a shaven head, a nose as long and wide as a Zulu’s shield and more diamond studs in his ears than the Queen of Sheba. He dressed like a star of gangsta rap and seemed to own more baseball caps than Babe Ruth — not an uncommon look among the lads at London City. But unlike some of our other players he showed no signs of fatigue after his World Cup; he worked hard in training, did exactly what he was told and behaved himself impeccably. He even stopped tweeting; and when he called me sir I almost forgot about my earlier reservations concerning his attitude to discipline. Besides, after the first match, I had a more pressing matter to worry about.

Dynamo St Petersburg are a relatively new team and the creation of its co-owners, Semion Mikhailov and Pushkin Kompaniya, a Russian energy giant that does everything from manufacturing huge power turbines to exporting oil and gas and, very probably, large quantities of cash. The Nyenskans Stadium, on the banks of the Neva River, is close to the Lakhta Center, the tallest skyscraper in Europe. It has a capacity of fifty thousand which, until Dynamo’s older rivals, Zenit’s, new stadium is finished, makes it the largest in the city. All of which makes St Petersburg sound sophisticated and modern. In reality, the roads are badly potholed, the people shockingly threadbare and all but the best hotels — of which there are perhaps three or four — are verminous.

No less verminous are a hard core of football hooligans who carry Nazi flags, give Hitler salutes, throw bananas at black players and generally cause mayhem whenever and wherever they can. Since Bekim Develi had left Dynamo St Petersburg in difficult circumstances just six months earlier I’d taken the decision not to play him in this, our first match, for fear that his presence would inflame the home fans. Plus, I figured his adductor muscles probably needed a few more days’ rest. But I hardly wanted to rest our black players; that would have been giving in to intimidation, which is just what these racist bastards want. Perhaps because it was supposed to be a friendly match there were fewer monkey chants than usual and, at my request, our black players, of whom there are several, refused to be provoked. Predictably a banana was thrown onto the pitch but Gary Ferguson picked it up and ate it, which, if you’ve seen the condition of most fresh fruit in Russia, was brave.

The trouble, when it came, was from an unexpected quarter.

Dynamo defended well and they had one player, a centre back named Andre Sholokhov, who I made a note of for the future, but the star of the match was our own twenty-four-year-old Arab Israeli left-winger, Soltani Boumediene, who had started his career at Haifa and, like Denis Abayev, was a Muslim, albeit a fairly relaxed and secular one.

Soltani’s goal, the only goal of the match, was scored just before the last minute, a brilliant swerving, dipping free kick from an almost impossible angle and something I’d seen him try in training but rarely pull off. It was what happened next that caused all the problems. Soltani ran towards the television camera and gave a four-finger salute in celebration that meant nothing to me or to almost anyone else in the stadium and, at the time, passed without incident. It was only when we came off the pitch at full time that the situation grew unpleasant.

We were in the players’ tunnel on our way to the team dressing room when several members of the local OMON anti-riot police arrested Soltani and bundled him roughly into a police van. Volodya, our diminutive Russian minder, spoke to one of the policemen and was informed that the four-finger salute Soltani had made on camera was what was called a ‘4Rabia’ — the symbol of those supporting deposed Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a banned organisation in Russia. Volodya also told us that the police had orders to take Soltani back to the Angleterre Hotel — where we were staying — to collect his things, and then drive him straight to Pulkovo International Airport from where he was to be deported immediately.

Viktor accompanied us back to the hotel and spent the next thirty minutes on the telephone to the Colonel General of Police at the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Moscow while the team waited in the lobby. The Muslim Brotherhood, so the Colonel General claimed, had approved of previous Chechen Muslim attacks in Russia, although it later transpired there was no real evidence to support this allegation. But it couldn’t be denied that Soltani’s Twitter account listed the following tweet: Standing in love and soldierly Islamic brotherhood with friends and family in Tahrir Square #R4BIA and #Anticoup. All of which meant that Vik’s conversation with the Colonel General was to no avail and the deportation would go ahead as ordered.

As soon as we heard the news, the players and staff gathered outside the front of the hotel and watched as, handcuffed, Soltani Boumediene was driven away to the airport. No one said anything very much but the mood was subdued and several of the players told me they were in favour of us all following Soltani back to London on the next available plane. In view of what happened next, it might have been better if we had.

The press had got hold of the story by now and by some fluke this included BBC World, which hadn’t had a scoop in two decades. Somehow they managed to persuade Bekim Develi to be interviewed about what had happened and Bekim proceeded to give the lucky reporter an even bigger story than the one he thought he was reporting.

Bekim was the only Russian in our team and took what had happened to Soltani very personally:

‘As a Russian citizen,’ he said, ‘I feel deeply ashamed by what’s happened here at the Nyenskans Stadium this afternoon. Soltani Boumediene is a friend of mine and has nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood. He does not support terrorism. He is one of the most democratically minded players I’ve ever met. How else could he have played for an Israeli football team for as long as he did? The Israelis never found cause to deport the man when he was with Haifa FC. But the Russian authorities think they know better than the Israelis. Of course this is merely typical of modern life in Russia: no one has rights and people can be arrested without trial as a result of a single phone call. And why does this happen? Because of one man who is above the law, who does what he likes, and who is accountable to no one. Everyone knows who this man is. He is Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia. He is of course just a man but I for one am fed up of Vladimir Putin behaving like he is the tsar or perhaps God himself.’

Bekim also announced that he was joining the Other Russia, an umbrella coalition of Putin’s political opponents. He even suggested that Dynamo St Petersburg was affiliated with the Russian FSB — the secret police — just as Dynamo Moscow had once been a front for the old KGB.

‘There are secret people in St Petersburg,’ he told the BBC, ‘members of the FSB who are in bed with certain businessmen who need to make their dirty money as clean as possible. A football club is a very useful way of laundering dirty money, which may of course be why these crooks started Dynamo St Petersburg in the first place. To wash their ill-gotten gains. Money that has been embezzled and stolen from the Russian people.’

All of which left Vik having to make several more calls in order to try to prevent Bekim Develi being arrested, too.