Tiraspol, September 07 /Novosti Pridnestrovya/. The UEFA Champions League matches of a group stage will begin in Tiraspol from mid-September after Football Club Sheriff firstly in its history reached a European Competition stage. Such an event will have for Pridnestrovie not only a purely sport, but also image and, possibly, political significance.
Football has a long time ago overstepped sport boundaries in fact and has become a great political and economic resource. The country whose clubs are playing in the prestigious European competition cannot be ignored, even if it haven’t the international recognition yet. During Champions League matches, especially in November, when Real Madrid together with Italian Inter arrive in Tiraspol, our Pridnestrovie will probably be visited by many tourists. Finally, the Champions’ League group stage games provide opportunities for the football diplomacy.
The Football diplomacy is a process when politicians meet in an informal setting at matches or, for instance, when a match is organized, which subsequently serves as a favorable background and a prologue to important negotiations. This was the case in the year of 1955, when in August USSR as well as the FRG national teams held a friendly match (the Soviet team then won by a score of 3-2), but three weeks later, in fact 10 years after the World War II end, Moscow and Bonn town agreed to establish diplomatic relationships. This became a major breakthrough.
Among modern examples of football diplomacy it should be noted a range of Armenian and Turkish presidents Serzh Sargsyan and Abdullah Gül meetings in the year of 2008 and 2009 at the matches of the Armenian and Turkish national teams in the framework of qualifying competition to the World Competitions of 2010. These meetings then actually paved the way for the signing of so-called Zurich protocols on the diplomatic relations establishment and on the bilateral Armenian-Turkish relations development. However, such protocols haven’t been ratified, but this latest circumstance doesn’t negate capabilities and effect of football diplomacy. The Turkish state head then visited Armenia firstly in history.
In conclusion, at due time, such diplomacy helped to resolve Russian-British relations, which had seriously deteriorated after the death of former Federal Security Service officer Alexander Litvinenko under unexplained circumstances in the year of 2006 in London. In May 2008, a very favorable football background arose again. On the one hand, the UEFA Cup final in Manchester, where FC Zenit was supposed to play, and on the other one, the Champions League final at Moscow’s Luzhniki stadiums where two English clubs Manchester United and Chelsea competed. The Russian side then decided to let English fans across the border under a simplified procedure with only a passport and a ticket to the match. The British in their turn exempted Russian supporters from visa fees. And in July in the year of 2008, at the Great Eight summit in Japan, the first meeting of the then Russian Federation President Dmitry Medvedev and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown took place. Thus, a significant role in this was played not only by football events, which obviously bring an important contribution too.
Pridnestrovie and Moldova probably don’t even need to look back at other examples, because they have their own history of football diplomacy. In 2010-2011, the PMR President Igor Smirnov and Moldovan Prime Minister Vladimir Filat held a series of meetings at the Sheriff stadium in Tiraspol, where the similarly-named Tiraspol club then played matches in the Europa League’s group stage as well as the Moldova Super Cup. At that time, this became, in fact, the only platform where some kind of Moldovan-Pridnestrovian negotiations was held, since the work of the 5 + 2 format was blocked. Igor Smirnov together with Filat discussed particularly the possibility of the direct telephone communication resumption between Moldova and Pridnestrovie as well as the train movement on the Chisinau-Odessa route. As a result, the train movement began. Additionally, export procedures have been simplified for Pridnestrovian enterprises. Football diplomacy was then praised even by the Russian Foreign Ambassador at Large of Ministry Sergey Gubarev.
In September of the year of 2011, participants in the 5 + 2 negotiation format decided to resume the working of the format after more than five-year inactivity. In November, Igor Smirnov and Vladimir Filat signed a joint statement in Bendery town that the first official meeting of the format participants will take place on November 30 - December 1, 2011. It’s hard to argue with the fact that such final move was direct response of the football diplomacy that began in August 2010 at the Sheriff - Basel match.
And at that moment there are new even more convincing opportunities for such diplomacy, taking into consideration that Sheriff will play in the Champions League. Contacts within the framework of football diplomacy can be different not only at the highest level. Whether the Moldovan side will take advantage of this, as well as other participants in the 5 + 2 format? We will find out the answer soon enough. It should be just noted that a number of analogies between the current situation in relations between Tiraspol and Chisinau and what happened in the period of 2010-2011. As then, currently a cyclical change has taken place in Moldovan politics, when the governance period of conditionally left forces ended and the right ones came to power. As then, the previous Moldovan government left unresolved and, at the same time, rather acute problems in the Moldovan-Pridnestrovian negotiation process. Finally, as then, after the governing team’s change in the Republic of Moldova, there is a question about the atmosphere of trust between two parties and such atmosphere can be tried to be strengthened, including through negotiations at various informal platforms
