As life in Britain slowly returned to normality following WWII, the nations football authorities decided to formulate a plan in order to boost the country’s morale and the profile of peacetime football, which was for the most part suspended throughout the conflict. In 1945 it was announced that a mysterious side from behind the iron curtain named Dynamo Moscow – the current champions of their league -  would visit the UK to take on some of the best clubs it had to offer. Marketed as a “Goodwill Tour” – a show of solidarity between Russians and Brits -  it would be the first time a Russian club had visited the British Isles. For the Russians, it was an opportunity to score some geopolitical points and show off the superiority of the Soviet school of football. Prior to their departure, the team were invited (AKA ordered) to visit Josef Stalin who implored (AKA demanded) the team not to lose to the bourgeois capitalist sides.

 

Just 10 weeks after the end of World War II, FA Chairman Stanley Rous, in the company of a welcoming party consisting of FA staff, reporters and representitives from the Soviet embassy, awaited the Soviets arrival at the Northholt Aerodrome. 20 miles away, two huge Douglas DC-3 Dakotas, painted in green, white and red livery and embellished with red stars and other Soviet imagery, appeared on the horizon asking for permission to land at Croydon Airport. There had been a communication mix-up, and the welcoming party had turned up at the wrong airport. They quickly piled into several vehicles and made it to Croydon just as the Russians were disembarking. The welcoming party were greeted with the sight of 37 men and one woman wearing regal blue overcoats with hammer and sickle insignia and matching velour hats, led by their coach, the Merited Master of Sports of the USSR, Mikhail Yakushin. The Russian delegation carried mysterious cases wrapped in dark cloth. This puzzled the media, some of whom speculated that they contained atomic weapons. The truth was much more tame: knowing of the food rationing situation in Britain following the war, the Russians had brought their own meals along.

 

To the British public, Dynamo Moscow were essentially Martians. Despite the proliferation of stars and talent on their team, nobody really knew anything about them and in fact, few in those days had even heard of them. This was an era before Britain was regularly visited by continental teams, before British participation in European Cups and even the World Cup. The British press were fascinated, borderline obsessed with the foreigners. Although Dynamos players were well known back home, they were still considered the same as normal citizens, and so they were star struck by all the commotion they were met with. They had never been interviewed by the media before, and following an awkard press conference in which the players and even their official translator came across as timid and shy on their arrival they were dubbed “The Silent Ones” by the British tabloids. This moniker simply enhanced Dynamo’s mystique, and the medias fascination soon spread to the public, as the Russians were seen as heroes from the East who helped bring down Hitler, despite the opposing ideological viewpoints of the Soviet Union and Britain.

Dynamo had boosted their ranks with the addition of several star players from various Soviet clubs, especially for the tour. These were CDKA Moscow’s gifted striker Vsevolod Bobrov, and two more top tier players from Dynamo Leningrad including the Russian league’s top scorer.The squad were initially put up in accommodation at the Royal Horse Guards Barracks in Whitehall, London but being offered nothing but bare beds to sleep on with no pillows or linen, they refused to stay there. The public got heed of the situation and offered their houses and flats for the Russians to stay in, but they ended up residing at the Soviet Embassy and then the much more comfortable Imperial Hotel in Russell Square during their London stay. The Russians came to Britain with a list of requests, 14 in all. The English FA begrudgingly accepted most of them. In post-war London, safety was considered a big issue for the team. For example, they would only eat their own meals at the Soviet Embassy as they were afraid of being poisoned. Also, one match had to have a Soviet referee, and they really wanted to play Arsenal.

 

Their first match at Chelsea was absolute chaos. With kick off at 2:30pm, fans started queuing for tickets at 8:00am – enticed by the curiosity for their exotic visitors. Residents surrounding the stadium rented out their front yards for bicycle storage at thruppence a bike, and it set drivers back two shillings and sixpence for help finding a parking space. Bus and train services were swamped and just after 2:00pm, the gates were closed leaving 20,000 fans, most with tickets, locked out. So, they sought out other means of entry. Fans scaled adjacent buildings that had windows and roofs high enough to be able to see the pitch. Upper floor apartment residents would answer a knock at their door only to be shoved aside by fans inviting themselves in to use their balconies. At ground level, fences were torn down and used as battering rams on the locked gates. Fans clambered up walls and fences, negotiated electric rail tracks, climbed up embankments, made their way on to the stadiums roof and took to underground tunnels. The crowd soon spilled over the famous greyhound track and onto the very perimeter of the pitch in scenes dubbed by the press as “The Battle of Fulham Road.”

 

The 120,000 people present were bewildered by the sight of the Russians actually coming out onto the pitch 15 minutes early. This was confusing until the fans figured out that they were actually warming up. This kind of thing was totally unheard of back then. Then, even weirder to the locals but in a gesture of goodwill, the Dynamo players presented each Chelsea player with a boquet of flowers prior to kick off – normal practice in Dynamos homeland but quite confounding to the Londoners.

 

Once the game finally kicked off, the Soviets proved that they weren’t as timid as they seemed, although they were in awe at the noise and behavior of the crowd compared to the regimented and subdued behavior of fans back home. Dynamo goal keeper Alexei Khomich (nicknamed “The Tiger”) had the game of his life with some magnificent saves. Chelsea fielded England striker and former Everton man Tommy Lawton who they had purchased just the week before for a club record £11,500, as well as special guest stars Joe Bacuzzi and Jim Taylor, borrowed from Fulham. Playing in rare but suitable red strips due to a colour clash, Chelsea went ahead 2-0 by half time. The score remained the same until 20 minutes from the end, Kartsev struck from outside the area and then set Archangelski up for the equalizer a few minutes later. Chelsea retook the initiative with a Lawton goal and it appeared all over until Bobrov grabbed another equaliser for the Soviets, who were now being cheered on by the thousands of fans. This last goal was allowed despite the Soviet being 5 meters offside. The referee later explained that he made the decision for “diplomatic reasons”. When the final whistle blew, hundreds of Chelsea fans ran onto the pitch and lifted the Dynamo players onto their shoulders in celebration of what has been dubbed one of the greatest games ever played on British soil.

 

The British were astonished by Dynamos tactics, a style of play called “Passovotchka” which involved constant positional interchange in a groundbreaking 4-2-4 formation and running around in different directions so that their opponents couldn’t keep up, a type of “organised disorder”. Chelsea’s captain exclaimed that “Dynamo is the best side I have ever played against”. News quickly spread of their incredible performance and literally the next day, the USSR was invited to join FIFA as a direct result of this game. The Soviets next challenge awaited them in Wales where they played Cardiff City. Presented with miners lamps in honor of the areas mining history, the visitors put 10 goals past the hapless third division side.

 

Then it was back to London for their highly anticipated game against Arsenal, a crazy match in which the rulebook may as well have been burnt and thrown out the window. Like their Russian counterparts, Arsenal were augmented by a number of international players on loan from various clubs just for the occasion. Distinguished stars such as Stanley Matthews from Stoke City, Stan Mortensen from Blackpool, QPR’s Harry Brown and quality players from Fulham and Bury all joined the Gunners. The match was held at White Hart Lane, Arsenal calling their bitter rival’s stadium “home” while Highbury was being bumped out from its use as an air raid precautions station, and a fog descended upon the ground that was so thick, it was impossible to see one end of the pitch from the other. Both teams tried to out cheat one another. At one stage, Dynamo made a substitution but they didn’t actually take anybody off the pitch. Some supporters claimed they could see as many as 15 Soviets on the field at once. The English went hard at their opponents until George Drury was sent off. He later snuck back on, using the fog for cover, as if nothing had happened. He managed to play out the rest of the contest without the referee noticing. Then, legend has it that the Arsenal goalkeeper walked off and a spectator took it upon themselves to replace him in the last few minutes of the match. What mattered was the end result, and Dynamo won 4-3.

 

The clubs final game of the tour was against Glasgow Rangers. A tense atmosphere permeated prior to kick off, with the respect given to the men from the East giving way to a feeling of embarrassment from the Brits failing to defeat their ideological rivals. Despite the Scots earning two trips to the penalty spot, the sides drew 2-2. The Soviets returned home to a hero’s welcome, finishing the tour unbeaten and with a goal difference of +10. Stanley Matthews summed it up best: “Many years have passed since we met the Russian football players. Since then, in the hearts of everyone who lived in those days, the words Dynamo Moscow are associated with the concept of class football.” 

Star player: Vsevolod Bobrov, DOB 1 December 1922, Morshansk, Soviet Russia

Bobrov was an incredible Soviet athlete who excelled in football, bandy and ice-hockey. Amazingly, he is considered one of the greatest Russian players ever in all three of these sports. Bobrov was first and foremost a football player, taking the field for three Moscow teams; CDKA, VVS and Spartak. He also played for the Soviet Union national team at the 1952 Olympics. He served in the Soviet Army during WWII and and was asked to play for the Army club CDKA (the future CSKA Moscow) in 1945, also joining Dynamo Moscow on their tour of Britain that year. He won the Soviet football championship three times, netting 97 goals in 116 games. When he quit football in 1953, he took up ice-hockey full-time which he had played since it’s introduction into the Soviet Union in 1946 – he was in fact one of the first Russian ice-hockey players and first learned to skate at the age of 5. Bobrov was even more successful in ice-hockey than he was in football. In 1950, almost the entire Soviet ice hockey team was wiped out in a plane crash. Bobrov missed the plane as he slept in and had to travel by rail. He soon became one of the top scorers in the Soviet ice-hockey league with 254 goals in just 130 games and represented his country in the sport at several world championships and the 1956 Winter Olympics, where his team won the gold medal. An exclusive list of hockey players who have scored over 250 goals is called The Bobrov Club, after him. Bobrov is one of the few athletes to compete in both the Summer and Winter Olympics. Afterwards, he coached the Soviet national ice-hockey team and was inducted into the International Ice Hockey Hall of Fame in 1997. Bobrov was named as the third greatest Russian athlete of all time after goal keeper Lev Yashin and wrestler Alexander Karelin.