The former Soviet Football League
Throughout history, territories have often sought independence from a larger nation for political, cultural, or other reasons. There are many cases of this type of situation throughout human history around the world and throughout the years. In football, national leagues rarely merge or separate, and in fact, to remain competitive, some clubs join a higher-level league, such as AS Monaco playing in France, or Welsh clubs like Cardiff City, Swansea City, or the now very famous Wrexham, which play in the English football system.Here we will do a trip back in time to another era in the world and to a particular football league that no longer exists today, but whose participating clubs are still (mostly) active, serving as an example of what it would be like to merge several national leagues into one. As you may already know (because it's in the title), today we'll be talking about the Soviet (USSR) Football League.
Beginnings of Soviet football
As happened in many places, Scottish and English sailors and merchants arriving in the ports of Tsarist Russia at the end of the 19th century brought the sport to those port cities, where it quickly gained great popularity and began to spread throughout Russian territory. By the beginning of the 20th century, there were already local football leagues in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and around 200 teams had already been formed throughout Russia. Logically, with the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War, all football activity came to a halt, although it would resume after the formation of the USSR.Logically, with the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War, all football activity came to a halt, although it resumed after the formation of the USSR. In the 1930s, there were already established clubs that, curiously, had names that had to be approved by the Russian government. Hence names like Spartak and Dynamo, which have remained to this day. From the Spartak Sport Society, through its leader, Nikolai Starostin, a proposal arose to form a football league that would bring together clubs from the different regions of the Soviet Union. This proposal was quickly approved since, for the communist regime, football could serve as a propaganda tool and to demonstrate the superiority of the socialist system.
Soviet football pyramid and competition system
On May 22, 1936, the first match of the nascent USSR league, dubbed Group A, was played between Dynamo Leningrad and Lokomotiv Moscow. Viktor Lavrov of the Moscow team scored the first goal in the tournament's history in the 5th minute. The tournament would be held twice a year. The first, in 1936, consisted of seven teams from Moscow, Leningrad, and Kyiv, with Dynamo Moscow as the first champion. For the second edition in 1936, the number of teams increased to eight, and this upward trend continued until 1938, when there were 26 teams.The tournament continued to be played continuously until 1941, when a hiatus began for World War II. In 1945, football returned to the USSR, and the league changed its name to The First Group of USSR, to denote the first tier, while the second tier was called The Second Group of USSR. Thus began the name changes for the tournament that would end in 1973, when Vysshaya Liga would continue until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. From its inception, there were two tiers until 1963, when a third tier was created, or rather consolidated, after several previous attempts, but none of them lasting long enough. A fourth tier also existed, although this one only lasted six non-consecutive seasons and was more of an auxiliary league.
Tournament details
Although the Soviet Union was a single country, the reality was that it contained distinct nations within it, and this became evident, even though the communist regime sought to avoid any problems of nationalism, but it was inevitable. Thus, clashes between teams from different nations were tense, and the rivalry clearly exceeded the pitch. Furthermore, victories against Moscow teams were seen as small victories against the regime.Until 1961, no non-Muscovite team had won the league until that year Dynamo Kyiv managed to win the championship. In fact, the Ukrainian club was the Soviet league's most successful team despite not having won a single edition in the first 25 years of competition. Kyiv won 13 league titles, closely followed by Spartak Moscow, which won 12. Over the years, league titles were shared among five of the countries that made up the USSR (Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and Belarus), with Georgia (Dinamo Tbilisi) winning two editions and Armenia (Ararat Yerevan) and Belarus (Dinamo Minsk) winning one each. Of the fifteen nations that made up the Soviet Union, only Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan did not have a representative during the existence of the USSR league.
In 1990, Dinamo FC Dinamo Tbilisi of Georgia and Zalgiris Vilnius of Lithuania withdrew from the championship due to their respective countries' independence. In 1991, the final edition of the league was underway, as the USSR collapsed, with CSKA Moscow as the last champion. The following year, each nation competed in its own national league.
Top scorers in the Soviet top league
Of course, we also need to highlight some of the greatest scorers in this era of the league. Just as the championship itself produced legendary clubs and fierce rivalries, it also gave rise to some great goal scorers in European football history. Over its 55 years of existence, the Soviet Top League crowned many strikers as top scorer, and several of them became big names not only in the USSR, but all over the football world.One of the most prolific scorers was Oleg Blokhin of Dynamo Kyiv, who holds the all-time record with 211 league goals during this time, and was the league's top scorer on multiple occasions during the 1970s. On top of that, he also won the Ballon d'Or in 1975, a rare honor for a Soviet player. Another Dynamo Kyiv star, Oleg Protasov, became the standout forward of the 1980s, twice finishing as top scorer before moving abroad.
Earlier decades were dominated by players like Nikita Simonyan of Spartak Moscow, who won the top scoring title four times in the 1950s and scored a total of 133 goals. Also Eduard Streltsov needs a special mentioning, the Torpedo Moscow striker often nicknamed the "Russian Pelé," who led the charts in the late 1950s. In the immediate post-war years, Vsevolod Bobrov (CSKA Moscow) was the first true superstar of Soviet football, winning the top scorer title three times.
Analysis
What we mentioned at the beginning of the article, that this article would serve to see what a combined league of several countries would be like, was seen in the USSR league. If we review the last two decades in European football, we find that, between 2005 and 2009, two Russian teams (CSKA Moscow and Zenit St. Petersburg) and one Ukrainian team (Shakhtar Donetsk) won the UEFA Cup, UEFA's second-highest competition, which speaks to the competitive level of these countries.Likewise, a combined national team of these countries, along with others like Georgia or Armenia, could be a powerhouse in Europe. In fact, the Soviet Union finished fourth in the 1966 World Cup and reached three quarterfinals, in addition to winning the Euro 1960 and reaching three other finals. We must also add two gold medals and three bronze medals in the Olympic Games. In today's football, we're a long way from seeing a situation like this (a union of countries) happen, but this look at history gives us an idea of what could happen if it were to happen.
Statistics winners Soviet top league 1936-1991
Soviet Top League: Champions by year
| Year | Champion | Country/region |
|---|---|---|
| 1936 (spring) | Dynamo Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1936 (autumn) | Spartak Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1937 | Dynamo Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1938 | Spartak Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1939 | Spartak Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1940 | Dynamo Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1941 | - (abandoned due to WWII) | - |
| 1945 | Dynamo Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1946 | CDKA Moscow (later CSKA) | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1947 | CDKA Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1948 | CDKA Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1949 | Dynamo Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1950 | CDKA Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1951 | CDSA Moscow (CSKA) | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1952 | Spartak Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1953 | Spartak Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1954 | Dynamo Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1955 | Dynamo Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1956 | Spartak Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1957 | Dynamo Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1958 | Spartak Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1959 | Dynamo Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1960 | Torpedo Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1961 | Dynamo Kyiv | Ukrainian SSR |
| 1962 | Spartak Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1963 | Dynamo Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1964 | Dinamo Tbilisi | Georgian SSR |
| 1965 | Torpedo Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1966 | Dynamo Kyiv | Ukrainian SSR |
| 1967 | Dynamo Kyiv | Ukrainian SSR |
| 1968 | Dynamo Kyiv | Ukrainian SSR |
| 1969 | Spartak Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1970 | CSKA Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1971 | Dynamo Kyiv | Ukrainian SSR |
| 1972 | Zorya Voroshilovgrad (Luhansk) | Ukrainian SSR |
| 1973 | Ararat Yerevan | Armenian SSR |
| 1974 | Dynamo Kyiv | Ukrainian SSR |
| 1975 | Dynamo Kyiv | Ukrainian SSR |
| 1976 (spring) | Dynamo Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1976 (autumn) | Torpedo Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1977 | Dynamo Kyiv | Ukrainian SSR |
| 1978 | Dinamo Tbilisi | Georgian SSR |
| 1979 | Spartak Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1980 | Shakhtar Donetsk | Ukrainian SSR |
| 1981 | Dynamo Kyiv | Ukrainian SSR |
| 1982 | Dinamo Minsk | Belarusian SSR |
| 1983 | Dnepr Dnepropetrovsk (Dnipro) | Ukrainian SSR |
| 1984 | Zenit Leningrad | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1985 | Dynamo Kyiv | Ukrainian SSR |
| 1986 | Dynamo Kyiv | Ukrainian SSR |
| 1987 | Spartak Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1988 | Dnepr Dnepropetrovsk (Dnipro) | Ukrainian SSR |
| 1989 | Spartak Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
| 1990 | Dynamo Kyiv | Ukrainian SSR |
| 1991 | CSKA Moscow | Russia (RSFSR) |
Titles by club
| Club | Titles | Country/region |
|---|---|---|
| Dynamo Kyiv | 13 | Ukrainian SSR |
| Spartak Moscow | 12 | Russia (RSFSR) |
| Dynamo Moscow | 11 | Russia (RSFSR) |
| CSKA Moscow (incl. CDKA/CDSA) | 7 | Russia (RSFSR) |
| Torpedo Moscow | 3 | Russia (RSFSR) |
| Dinamo Tbilisi | 2 | Georgian SSR |
| Dnepr Dnepropetrovsk (Dnipro) | 2 | Ukrainian SSR |
| Ararat Yerevan | 1 | Armenian SSR |
| Dinamo Minsk | 1 | Belarusian SSR |
| Zenit Leningrad | 1 | Russia (RSFSR) |
| Shakhtar Donetsk | 1 | Ukrainian SSR |
| Zorya Voroshilovgrad (Luhansk) | 1 | Ukrainian SSR |
Titles by current country
| Country | Titles | Example champion clubs |
|---|---|---|
| Russia | 35 | Spartak Moscow, Dynamo Moscow, CSKA Moscow, Torpedo Moscow, Zenit Leningrad |
| Ukraine | 22 | Dynamo Kyiv, Shakhtar Donetsk, Dnepr Dnepropetrovsk, Zorya Luhansk |
| Georgia | 2 | Dinamo Tbilisi |
| Armenia | 1 | Ararat Yerevan |
| Belarus | 1 | Dinamo Minsk |
