Sheriff Tiraspol’s crew – a symbol of Transnistrian self-assertion
Photo: imago images / Goran Stanzl
Sheriff Tiraspol is a special football club in many ways. Mainly because he plays in the enemy’s league: Sheriff has won the championship in the Republic of Moldova 19 times in the past 20 years, plus the national cup ten times. But the city of Tiraspol is located in the Transnistria region, which declared itself independent from Moldova in 1990. Transnistria is not recognized by a single UN state, but it has its own government, currency and army. It is a complicated, autonomous entity that is now getting a wider public: Sheriff Tiraspol is playing in the Champions League for the first time and will receive Shakhtar Donetsk from Ukraine this Wednesday.
The conflict on Moldovan territory has been smoldering for generations and escalated during perestroika. The majority in the Soviet republic of Moldova wanted to leave Russian rule behind and oriented itself towards its pro-European neighbor in the west, Romania. Transnistria, a narrow strip of land 200 kilometers in length in the Moldovan east, on the border with Ukraine, professed the Russian language and politics in Moscow. Fighting followed with almost 600 dead. Since the ceasefire in 1992, the conflict between Moldova and Transnistria has been “frozen”.
“Transnistria wants to use football to show that it is superior to Moldova,” says Sascha Düerkop, former general secretary of Conifa, the football association for unrecognized countries, minorities and regions. “The rise of Sheriff Tiraspol is primarily due to financial reasons.” In 1993, two former Soviet security forces founded the Sheriff company based on their previous occupation. They quickly established links with the ruling party and increased their influence. Supermarkets, petrol stations, mobile communications or media houses: Sheriff is now said to influence 60 percent of the Transnistrian economy and cover half of the state budget with his taxes. There are persistent allegations that politicians like the former Transnistrian President Igor Smirnov are supposed to use the company for corrupt business.
The FC Sheriff gives this network a supposedly apolitical facade. The club was founded in 1996, started in the third division and made a rapid ascent. Sheriff won the Moldovan Cup for the first time in 1999, followed by ten championship titles in a row from 2001. The Sheriff Group financed one of the most modern training centers in Europe and, for 200 million euros, one of the most beautiful stadiums in the region, with an integrated luxury hotel. Between 2009 and 2018 Sheriff played four times in the group stage of the Europa League. “For Sheriff, football is a marketing project with which you can now sell yourself even better in the Champions League,” says Sascha Düerkop.
The Moldovan government in the capital Chisinau officially has nothing against the fact that their country is represented in Europe by an association from a breakaway region. FC Sheriff officials and fans adhere to the regulations in international competitions – and do without Transnistrian symbols, chants or flags, at least in the interior of the stadium in front of cameras. “You can also see the sheriff as a reconciliation project,” says Sascha Düerkop. “For the home games in Tiraspol, many fans cross the hard border between Transnistria and Moldova, which they might not otherwise cross.”
Internationally, too, football offers diplomatically isolated Transnistria a popular platform for networking. Other members of the »Community of Non-Recognized States« founded in 2001 – such as the autonomous regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which belong to Georgia under international law – also hope for such opportunities. The clubs FC Tskhinvali, which has roots in South Ossetia, or Dinamo Sukhum, which comes from Abkhazia, lack the financial means for European competitions.
It looks different with Qarabağ. The association comes from the city of Agdam in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region in the Caucasus that Azerbaijan and Armenia have been fighting over for decades. Qarabağ has long been at home in Baku and is celebrating one title after another – this is how the Azerbaijani regime underscores its claim to Nagorno-Karabakh.
Beyond club football, the World and European Championships of the Conifa Association offer a regular platform for the unrecognized states and ethnic groups. Teams from Tibet, Kurdistan, Northern Cyprus and Somaliland have already been there. Sponsors, anthems or political conflicts of interest: As Secretary General, Sascha Düerkop always tried to find compromises and pragmatic solutions. Sometimes with unforeseeable consequences: in 2018, a team from the Hungarian minority from Ukraine won the Conifa World Cup. The government in Kiev saw this as “sporting separatism” and issued a lifelong ban on domestic gaming for Ukrainian games.
So far, Transnistria has not sent its own national team to Conifa tournaments, probably also because it does not want to annoy the Moldovan Association and UEFA. “There is no great Transnistrian nationalism or ethnic conflicts,” says Sascha Düerkop. The approximately 500,000 inhabitants are made up of Moldovans, Russians and Ukrainians each, one third, and the region is trilingual. Several professionals from Transnistria have made it into the Moldovan national team, but they have never qualified for a major tournament. Sheriff Tiraspol, on the other hand, has reached the Champions League with players from ten nations. Professionals from Transnistria play a subordinate role – and yet the club is a symbol of their self-assertion.
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