Champions League debutant Sheriff Tiraspol rubs hands after draw

Saturday, August 28, 2021 at 10:50 am• Yanick Vos • Last update: 11:03

For the first time in history, a club from Moldova has managed to reach the group stage of the Champions League. Sheriff Tiraspol, who hails from the microstate of Transnistria, has been consistently eliminated in the preliminaries of the billion-dollar ball in recent years, but has now managed to make it through to the main stage of the tournament. In the coming months, the club awaits meetings with Real Madrid, Internazionale and Shakhtar Donetsk.

After FC Astana from Kazakhstan (2015) and Qarabag from Azerbaijan (2017), Moldova now also supplies a club to the Champions League for the first time. However, the success of Sheriff Tiraspol in his own country may have been received with mixed feelings. In addition to being the second largest city in Moldova, Tiraspol is also the capital of the de facto independent microstate of Transnistria. The region is located east of the Dniester River, on the border of Ukraine. In 1990 the small state seceded from Moldova. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Moldova declared itself independent, but Transnistria decided not to go along with it. A short civil war followed, after which the Soviet Socialist Republic of Transnistria came into being. The state is not recognized internationally. Transnistria still carries with it its communist roots; The well-known hammer and sickle can be found on the red and green striped flag. Due to this conflict, Sheriff Tiraspol cannot count on the support of a large part of the inhabitants of Moldova.

Sheriff Tiraspol has a not-so-great history; after all, the club was only founded in 1997. One year after its foundation, Sheriff Tiraspol was promoted to the highest level. For Moldovan standards, considerable amounts were pumped into the club, so that the club from Tiraspol grew into a top club in its own country in a short time. The money comes from Sheriff, the second largest company in Transnistria. The mega concern was founded in the early 1990s by Viktor Gushan and Ilya Kazmaly. The lenders, who own gas stations, supermarkets, a TV channel and a production company, among other things, had big plans for the club. The Sheriff Stadium was built in 2002 and can accommodate 13,300 spectators. When the new home port was completed, the club had already celebrated its first national titles. Since the promotion to the Divizia Nationala in 1998, Sheriff Tiraspol has been national champion no fewer than nineteen times. Only in 2011 (Dacia Chisinau) and 2015 (FC Milsami Orhei) did the club from Tiraspol pass the league title. With nineteen league titles, seven Supercups and ten times in the Moldovan Cup, Sheriff Tiraspol is the most successful club in Moldova of all time.

Qualifying to the group stage of the Champions League is the club’s next milestone. For years, Sheriff Tiraspol tried to force qualification. The road to the billion-dollar ball turned out to be too long before. The champion of Moldova, number 34 on the UEFA coefficient ranking, enters the first qualifying round. In 2009, Sheriff was very close to it for the first time. In the play-offs, Olympiacos turned out to be a size too big over two matches, as a result of which the Greek top club qualified for the group stage of the Champions League. Nevertheless, it was still a party in Tiraspol, as the club was allowed to participate in the group stage of the Europa League for the first time. In a group with Fenerbahçe, FC Twente and Steaua Bucharest, Sheriff finished in a creditable third place with five points. On October 22, 2009, the Tukkers recorded their first group stage victory in a final tournament. The Moldovans won 2-0 at the time. This was followed by three more entries in the group stage of the Europa League; never did Sheriff Tiraspol survive the group stage.

It is not surprising that Sheriff Tiraspol never made it past the Europa League group stage. The club works with a small budget and the entire group of players has, according to Transfermarkt a market value of 12.98 million euros. For comparison: the Eredivisie clubs Heracles Almelo (14.08 million) and Sparta Rotterdam (14.68 million) have a group of players with a higher market value. With an estimated market value of no more than a million euros, captain-cum attacker Frank Castañeda is the most expensive player in the selection. It is all the more clever that Sheriff has managed to qualify for the group stage of the Champions League. Midfielder Dimitrios Kolovos is perhaps the only Sheriff player who rings a bell with Dutch football fans. The 28-year-old Greek wore the Willem II shirt three times in the 2018/19 season. The Tilburgers rented him from KV Mechelen at the time. His stay in Tilburg was not very successful: after 62 minutes of play in the Eredivisie, his lease with Willem II was already dissolved at the end of 2018. Kolovos was not happy with his role in the squad and then finished the season in Cyprus with Omonia Nicosia.

The Champions League season has been underway for Sheriff Tiraspol for a while. At the beginning of July, the double meeting with FC Teuta Durres was therefore on the program for the club that had become champion in a convincing way. With a goal difference of 116 for and 7 against, the nineteenth league title in club history was won. The Albanian champion was no match for the club from Tiraspol. After a 0-4 victory in Albania, the team of trainer Yuriy Vernydub was too strong at home with 1-0. In the next Champions League preliminary round, Alashkert Yerevan was the opponent. The champion of Armenia was also won twice: 0-1 and 3-1. Sheriff had thus qualified for the third preliminary round, in which Red Star Belgrade was the opponent. With the champion of Serbia, the Moldovans logically had a harder time. The team of coach Dejan Stankovic was the towering favourite. After all, the selection of Red Star, with an estimated market value of sixty million euros, is much stronger on paper. In Belgrade, Sheriff pulled a 1-1 draw out of the fire. Castañeda was the goalscorer on behalf of the Moldovans in a game in which the home side ended with ten men after a red card from Guelor Kanga in the 58th minute. With one man less, Red Star did not manage to score the second goal. In the return in Tiraspol, Danilo Arboleda scored the only goal of the game and so Sheriff qualified for the play-offs.

After Sheriff Tiraspoll dealt with the champions of Albania, Armenia and Serbia, Dinamo Zagreb was the last hurdle on the way to the billion-dollar ball. On paper, the Moldavians were again the lesser. The Croatian winger Luka Ivanusec alone is worth more than the complete Sheriff roster with a market value of 13.5 million euros. “When you start against those guys it’s eleven against eleven. And I’ve never seen a bag of money score a goal,” said Johan Cruijff in 2013 when Ajax had a tough draw in the Champions League with Barcelona, ​​AC Milan and Celtic as opponents. Sheriff may have been inspired by this statement. Because despite the huge differences on paper, the Moldovan champions showed how much they wanted to go to the Champions League. Dinamo Zagreb was defeated 3-0 in front of their own audience, partly due to two goals from Adama Traoré, not to be confused with his namesake at Wolverhampton Wanderers. The Malian international was of great value to Sheriff in the preliminary rounds of the tournament. Like Silva Henrique de Sousa Luvannor, Traoré scored four times. At the return in Zagreb, Dinamo needed many goals to clear the deficit. No goals were scored, meaning Sheriff qualified for the Champions League for the first time in history.

24 years after the club was founded, Sheriff Tiraspol makes his debut in the Champions League. With this, UEFA welcomes another debutant, after Qarabag, RB Leipzig, TSG Hoffenheim, Red Star Belgrade, Young Boys, Red Bull Salzburg, Istanbul Basaksehir, FK Krasnodar, Midtjylland and Stade Rennais participated for the first time. Sheriff Tiraspol is officially one of the 32 best clubs in Europe this season and sees the millions pouring in. Due to the qualification for the group stage, the club can add a starting premium of 15.65 million euros and a premium of 1.137 million euros based on the coefficient ranking. Whether more bounties are in the pipeline for Sheriff remains to be seen. A win in the group stage yields 2.8 million euros, a draw 930,000 euros. It will be a tough task for Sheriff to get points. On Thursday, the club from Moldova was linked to Real Madrid, Internazionale and Shakhtar Donetsk in the draw. Sheriff is facing an arduous, but not impossible, task. The club has proven that in the preliminary rounds.