On April 25, 1945, nearly six years after the bloodiest war in human history began with Hitler’s invasion of Poland, American and Soviet troops met for the first time at the River Elbe, near the town of Torgau in Germany. It was a moment of genuine camaraderie between the two allies and was celebrated in both nations as a symbol of their cooperation in defeating Nazi Germany. But the friendly meeting belied the fragility of the alliance. As the Iron Curtain descended across Europe, relations between the Soviet Union and the United States rapidly deteriorated. They would spend the next forty years in a state of constant political tension that featured proxy wars, arms races, and shoe-banging at the UN.
The meeting at the Elbe
Twenty four years later the Elbe moment was recreated on the football pitch. In 1969 Dynamo Kyiv became the first Soviet football team to visit the United States. Their tour of the West Coast was played out in a friendly atmosphere free from the incessant politicization that plagued every other sporting encounter between the two superpowers. Much like the meeting at the Elbe, it was not representative of Soviet-American relations, but a rare display of good will between two geopolitical rivals.
An unlikely meeting
The circumstances that led to the historic first meeting between a Soviet and an American team are a direct result of the disorganization, mismanagement, and general ineptitude that plagued American football throughout the 1960s. The brief history of the Clippers, Dynamo’s lone opponents during their brief tour, is a testament to just how bad things were.
The Oakland Clippers were founded in 1966. In 1967, they won the National Professional Soccer League, a league not even sanctioned by FIFA. The following season they finished 2nd in the Pacific Division of the newly formed North American Soccer League and failed to make the playoffs. Shortly after the conclusion of the 1968 season the club management re-branded the team as the California Clippers and, rather than rejoin the NASL, opted to play an exhibition schedule against foreign clubs from all across Latin America and Europe.
When Dynamo Kyiv received an invitation from the California Soccer Football Association to visit the United States in late 1968, they were in the midst of a golden era. After becoming the first team outside of Moscow to with the Soviet championship in 1961, Dynamo quickly established themselves as one of the strongest sides in Soviet football. Under legendary manager Viktor Maslov they won the league three times in a row, from 1966-68, and knocked holders Celtic out of the European Cup in the first round in 1968.
After drawn out negotiations and diplomatic wrangling, the response finally came. Dynamo Kyiv, three time defending Soviet champions, accepted the invitation to play a series of exhibition matches against the California Clipper.
“There’s only one way for us to grow,” said Clippers chairman Joseph O’Neill shortly thereafter, “to have a schedule with as many international matches as possible. We should be happy that such a great club, the champions of the USSR, has agreed to share their experience with us.”
The clippers in 1968
A schedule was quickly drawn up. Travel arrangements were sorted. On February 17 the team landed at JFK international airport in New York. They greeted by a small reception committee and a few members of the Ukrainian Sports Club of New York who presented the team with a bouquet of flowers.
Maslov gave an interview through an interpreter in which he refused to single out any of the top players, remarking that “all of them are stars, how else would they be national champions.” He briefly discussed his tactics and remarked that the team was looking forward “with curiosity” to the matches to come.
The bizarre buildup
On February 20, two days after Dynamo landed at JFK, the New York Times published an article entitled ‘Death Before Defeat.’ The article told the story of the legendary FC Start, the team made up of mainly Dynamo players that defeated a selection of German soldiers during World War II and paid for it with their lives. “But in the summer of 1942,” reads the article, “Dynamo Kiev was more than a soccer team.” The legend of the Death Match crossed the Atlantic along with the team.
By the time the article was published Dynamo were already on the West Coast, preparing for their first match. Their opponents were also getting ready. In the lead up to the opening fixture the Clippers’ Yugoslav general manager (effectively a director of football), Aleksandar Obradović was busy recruiting the top stars of American football to join his team. Among the last minute additions were John Kowalik and Cirilo ‘Pepe Fernandez,’ the joint top goalscorers of the 1968 NASL season.
Dr. Aca Obradović, as he was known, was taking this very seriously. Before the match he stated “the Russians [sic] are very strong at football. They will try to score a goal as soon as possible, and we must take steps to defend against this strategy.” Its unclear whether this was the actual game plan, or if the tactical analysis was dumbed down for the American readership.
The day before the match the Washington Post published a preview, calling it ‘Russian Club Makes U.S. Soccer Bow.’ The Post added another fascinating narrative to what was already an intriguing affair:
“The game is a renewal of a series between the coaches, Viktor Maslow of Dynamo and Dr. Aleksander Obradovic, the Yugoslavian who coaches the Clippers. Teams coached by them have met five times with Obradovic’s teams winning three, losing one and tying one. Obradovic recalls with relish one game played in Moscow in 1948 shortly after Yugoslavia had declared its independence from Russian domination. ‘It wasn’t a game, it was politics,’ Obradovic said. ‘We took a 5-1 lead and Stalin and the Russian leaders walked out of the stadium. He missed seeing the Russians catch up and tie 5-1.’“
A fascinating narrative indeed, or it would have been had any of it actually been true. There was no match between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in 1948. The Soviet national team did not play their first international after World War II until the 1952 Olympic games in Finland. Yugoslavia and the USSR did meet at the football tournament in the 1952 Olympics, and the Soviets did come back from a 5-1 deficit to tie the match 5-5 and force a replay. But there is no indication that Stalin or any of the Soviet elite were present and given Stalin’s general apathy for football, it is highly unlikely that he was in attendance that day. Furthermore, Maslov was the manager of Torpedo Moscow in 1952 and never managed the Soviet national team. And on top of all that, Obradović was never even a coach. It’s possible that he was involved with the Yugoslav national team at the 1952 Olympics in an administrative capacity, but he was not their manager, and he never faced off against Maslov.
The Elbe Moment
On February 23, 1969, the starting eleven of Dynamo stepped on the pitch at the Kezar Stadium in San Francisco. Though it may not have been as momentous an occasion as the meeting at the Elbe, it was still an historic moment. This was the first time a Soviet football team had ever played a match on American soil.
Dynamo defeated the Clippers 3-2 in front of nearly 12,000 fans, an impressive number considering that the average attendance at Clippers’ matches during their 1968 NASL campaign was well below four thousand. Anatoly Puzach scored a hat trick for Dynamo, while the newly acquired Uruguayan Pepe Fernandez scored both the goals for the hosts.
The match garnered a considerable amount of media coverage in the United States, even beyond the West Coast. The next day a Washington Post headline read ‘Russians defeat U.S. in Soccer, 3-2.’ The American press referring to the Ukrainian club as ‘Russian’ or the ‘Russian champions’ was a constant throughout the tour.
After the match Viktor Maslov heaped praise onto Fernandez. He is quoted by the Los Angeles Times as saying “I like that number 10, he is quick, and very fast… he could play with anyone.”
Maslov was less impressed with the pitch, remarking “If you expect soccer to flourish in this country, you must show it on a better field.”
In the Soviet Union, meanwhile, the tour barely received any media coverage. The sports weekly Football-Hockey simply reprinted what the American press wrote; no Soviet journalists traveled with the team.
Cultural exchange
On the back of an impressive effort in defeat in the opener, the Clippers were full of confidence heading into the second tie of the tour. Fernandez predicted victory: “The Russians are tough and fast, but we can beat them.”
The Clippers were denied victory by a 90th minute equalizer from Yozhef Sabo at the Los Angeles Coliseum. In the final match of the tour back in San Francisco the Clippers finally beat Dynamo 1-0 thanks to a second half header from John Kowalik. Or, ‘Clippers Upset Russians,’ as the LA Times headline put it.
Though the LA Times insisted that the Clippers had nearly “all but ruined the first visit of a Soviet soccer team to the United States” until Dynamo salvaged a draw in the second fixture, their visit could not have been ruined by any events on the pitch. For the players of Dynamo, traveling to America was a once-in-a-lifetime event, and they were determined to take advantage of the situation.
“We like to travel on your roads and see as much as we can,” said Ukrainian Football head Fedor Martenyuk, who traveled with the team, “each day we tour for an hour or so on our bus before practice in your different cities.
If the Times is to be believed, the Dynamo players also “loaded their suitcase with rock ‘n roll records and autographed pictures of Lana Turner.” Meeting Lana Turner was reported to be the players’ number one request, and she obliged and gave the entire team a picture.
Sabo extended an invitation to the American Youth Soccer Association to send a team to participate in a youth tournament in Kyiv the following year, commenting “we have learned much about American soccer during our visit, and we hope you will want to come to our country.
Post-Tour
Three matches. One victory for each side and one draw. It was a fitting end to a tour carried out in a spirit of friendliness. One that was refreshingly free of Cold War propaganda in an era during which the sporting arena was politicized and transformed into a battleground where the Soviets and the Americans, absent any direct military confrontation, could assert their superiority over their adversary.
The Clippers went on to play Club América, West Brom, and Fiorentina over the course of their friendly schedule, but these tours were not enough to save the club. They were dissolved in June of 1969.
For Dynamo Kyiv, the aftermath of the tour as the beginning of end of their first golden era. A 2nd place finish in 1969 was followed by a slip to 7th the following season, during which Maslov was dismissed in ignominious circumstances.
It is unclear whether the Americans accepted Dynamo’s invitation and ever sent a youth team to the Soviet Union. The Soviet and the American national teams would not play each other until 1990, the waning days of the Cold War.
Unlike the meeting at the Elbe, which is commemorated to this day, Dynamo’s 1969 visit is barely remembered in either nation. There are no iconic photographs, no celebrations of its anniversary, no reunions between the players. After all, it was a series of friendlies with nothing on the line. It was nothing compared to the controversial 1972 Olympic gold medal match in basketball or the Americans’ shock 4-3 victory over the USSR in the hockey tournament at the 1980 games, both of which are still widely remembered as seminal Cold War moments. The Americans simply weren’t good enough at football for the Soviets to treat the tour as anything more than a curiosity.
It may not have resonated with the public as much as the meeting at the Elbe, nor did it have the same political undertones as all other sporting clashes between the Soviet Union and the United States. But, like the Elbe meeting, it was an exceptional moment. During an era when sport and politics always mixed, Dynamo’s tour was just about the football.
Acknowledgments
This article would not have been possible without the help of Grant Czubinski, who provided with the original source material from the LA Times, New York Times, and Washington Post. Follow him on twitter @Pieyow and check out his work for Eight by Eight magazine.