It is not true that only the names of the winners remain in history. The finalists are also remembered. They remember all the missed opportunities, they remember the hurt of defeat. Like that Barcelona final in May 1972, when Dynamo Moscow lost to Glasgow Rangers with a score of 2:3. I will never forget how, while on an expedition in the Turkmen desert, I listened to a radio report about this match, and then in my heart I almost crashed the expedition Speedola (there was such a shortwave radio). The great Konstantin Ivanovich Beskov was then recognized as the loser of the finals. After the loss of the USSR national team led by him to the Spaniards in Madrid in the final of the 1964 European Championship, after the Tashkent loss of Dynamo Moscow in the second replay with CSKA for the title of Union champion in 1970, Beskov’s team again failed to take the decisive barrier. Who would have known then, who would have believed that the Barcelona “failure” of Beskov’s pets would remain the greatest achievement of Russian club football for the next thirty years and three years.
After all, no matter what we say, the European titles of Dynamo Kyiv and Tbilisi (of which we are certainly proud) today are the history of Ukrainian and Georgian football.
It makes no sense, of course, to look for parallels between 1972 and 2005, but it is still symbolic that the list of European giants defeated by CSKA in this European Cup season began with the same Glasgow Rangers that Dynamo lost to 33 years ago. Today, I am sure, fans of all Moscow and all Russian teams, without exception, will root for the army team. They have everything they need to win. Skill, ambition, cohesion. Each of them, including the coach and the president, has something to prove. It's time for Russia to get its own cup. Good luck, “horses”!
