#antifahooligans

Preserving history at Arsenal Kiev:

Odd timing this one.  There I was lounging on the couch reading about the Ultras at Arsenal Kiev in the German football magazine 11Freunde, and suddenly the club pops up in the news.  Why am I bothered about Arsenal Kiev?  I've never even seen them play!  In fact, it's worse, I've seen their cross town rivals Dynamo play (against United).  And the word "Arsenal" normally endears indifference, at best, for me.  Hardly any reason then.  Basically what makes Arsenal Kiev interesting, is their fans, more specifically their ultras.

Arsenal Kiev's ultras, named, rather oddly, "Hoods Hoods Klan", are antifascists.  Hard bastard antifascists.  They found their way to football through politics.  Their desire to put the wind up nazis in the Ukraine, saw them identify football as a key battleground.  As a result they then took up watching Arsenal Kiev, and risk life and limb watching the team and providing a rare antifascist fanscene in the east.  You can imagine, they are often fairly heavily outnumbered.  

It's a bit of an odd way into football considering most of us (of an older generation at least) got into the game at a young age through the influence of our dads (I did say older generation ;-)).  The seeming lack of sporting interest, or at least late adoption of interest, in football, must also make life difficult for them.  The accusation of "not being real fans" will always come up amongst their opponents.  Yet whilst most of us are football fans first and foremost, I doubt many of us could hand on heart say that we just go to the match for the football.  Even if, for me, "meeting with friends" or "a few pubs on the way" might be listed above, "getting into a massive scrap with a nazi mob on a regular basis".  Likewise I have a certain amount of sympathy for antifascists who deal with nazis head on, particularly when the problem is so regularly ignored by the authorities.

Anyway, at present the owners of Arsenal Kiev want to change the name to CSKA Kiev.  The ultras don't want that.  Arsenal Kiev as a name firmly positions the club as independent from the army (CSKA) or police (Dynamo).  It has tradition too (Arsenal Kiev was first established in 1925).  The link to CSKA is minimal.  They don't share a history, they were always separate clubs.  The only link is that when Arsenal reformed in 2001, they took the place in the league of CSKA, who had just gone bust.  So if you are interested in the club, or the group, you can help preserve the name by doing the following:

In an recent interview the owner of Arsenal Kiev announced his plans to rename and rebrand the club - into CSKA Kiev a club that's dead for years with a notorious neonazist fan base! It's not surprising that the antifascist fans of Arsenal Kiev who are well-known in the European fan scenes for their activism have a word or two to say to these plans. They fight for the traditional identity of their club, for the name Arsenal Kiev and that Arsenal won't become another club which allows neonazis in the fan sector. This is our call for you to support them! Send a polite e-mail (or even a fax) to the club board ([email protected]). You can use this one written by Arsenal fans if you want to: "Save Arsenal Kiev! Keep the historical name! We were quite surprised to hear about the forthcoming changes. In some sense we were irritated that Arsenal Kiev should become CSKA… We would like to protest against the rebranding of the team, which is well known not only in Ukraine, but also in Europe. We’d like to ask the president of the club to prevent that process and keep the famous name of Arsenal Kiev! Arsenal should stay alive!"