Sheriff Tiraspol: Champions League team from an unrecognised state

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This is an updated version of an article originally published in May 2019.

"Ask not what Trans-Dniester can do for you - ask what you can do for Trans-Dniester."

We're driving down Andriy Smolensky's favourite street. It's the only one in Tiraspol that doesn't cause his Land Rover to bounce and rattle over potholes and broken concrete.

"They've used a new technology to make it like this," he says, almost proudly. "I could drive up and down it all day."

The tiny de facto republic of Trans-Dniester - sometimes known as Transnistria - is a place frozen in time.

Trans-Dniester profile

In its capital Tiraspol, the hammer and sickle motif of the former USSR is proudly displayed on billboards and government buildings. A huge statue of Lenin looks on from a plinth outside parliament, a mark of the pride and nostalgia the city feels for its Soviet past.

But on Wednesday night, it will take a giant stride towards its future. The city's football club, FC Sheriff Tiraspol, qualified for the Champions League group stage for the very first time with a play-off victory against Dinamo Zagreb in August. Their reward is a draw that will see them welcome Real Madrid and Inter Milan to Tiraspol, after Wednesday's curtain-raiser against Shakhtar Donetsk.

If it marks new ground for Sheriff, then elite European football will be stepping into the unknown, too. It is the first time the Champions League will have been played in one of Europe's 'unrecognised' de facto republics.

In international law, Trans-Dniester, a thin sliver of land on the border with Ukraine, belongs to the Republic of Moldova, a country formed in 1991 as the Soviet Union was collapsing.

In a referendum in September 2006, not recognised by Moldova or the wider international community, Trans-Dniester backed a plan to eventually join Russia

In 1992, Russian-backed forces fought a separatist war here. When it was over, close to a thousand people had been killed, and the land east of Moldova's Dniester river had seceded to form a self-declared new state that remains unrecognised by the international community.

Trans-Dniester takes its 'independence' from Moldova seriously. It uses its own currency, the Trans-Dniestrian rouble, which cannot be obtained or exchanged anywhere else in the world, and which sits outside the international banking system. In Tiraspol, phone signals from Moldova don't register, despite the 'border' being only 20km away.

The territory has a reputation for corruption, organised crime and smuggling. American foreign policy think-tank the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace described it as "a haven for smugglers".

Millions of dollars of contraband are believed to have been moved across its border with Ukraine in recent years. Yet in Tiraspol, buildings are crumbling and the roads are cracked. The capital is a picture painted in Soviet grey.

Smolensky used to work here as a broadcaster, transmitting Russian-funded German-language programmes to Europe and the United States that "spread the message" of what Trans-Dniester is trying to achieve.

Before that, he was employed by the territory's biggest private firm, the Sheriff Company. He worked on immigration papers for overseas signings at the company's football club, FC Sheriff Tiraspol.

The Champions League debutants have played in Moldova's football league since 1999. They are kings ruling over a peasant land. The Sheriff Company annual turnover is almost double the state budget, and it funds the club directly from its vast wealth reserves. The rest of Moldovan football is impoverished by comparison.

While the rest of the top division play on sports pitches rented from municipal authorities, Sheriff's home is a specially constructed $200m (£154m) arena on the outskirts of Tiraspol. They have won 20 of the 22 league titles they have contested.

The name Sheriff is synonymous with power in Trans-Dniester. The Sheriff Company was founded in 1993, ostensibly as a charity with the aim of providing financial assistance to veterans of the local state police in the immediate post-Soviet era.

Today, it dominates everything from food retail to banking, from the media to politics. While nominally a private business concern, in December 2020 it won an overwhelming majority in the local parliament through its political party, Obnovlenie - Renewal.

There is no formal connection between the Trans-Dniestrian government and FC Sheriff, but its position of political and economic strength is steadfastly secure.

But the football club haven't always had things their own way. Petr Lulenov is a member of the Trans-Dniestrian Football Federation. He says that, before victory in this season's Champions League qualifiers, Sheriff's blueprint for European success had been failing for years.

"It was the business model of the club to sign foreign players from South America and from Africa, add to their value and then sell them to Russian clubs," says Lulenov.

But owing to the weakness of the domestic league and the subsequent lack of competition, the model wasn't sufficient for raising players' standards.

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