Today’s featured object from the collection represents the last, for now, of the favourite European football clubs, in the form of by-no-means-least Dynamo Minsk, a city the name of which it has proved, over many years, impossible not to regard fondly, as it moved home to Belarus from its previous, originally-discovered situation within the former Soviet Union.
Dynamo would have come to attention late in 1983, courtesy of World Soccer magazine supplying evidence of their existence in rather grand style, reporting the reigning Russian champions’ plundering of a total of nine aggregate goals past our favourites Raba ETO Győr, six of which came away in Hungary (with three in reply, a fabulous scoreline), in a second round European Cup tie: evidently, despite such a disappointing result, no offence was taken & Minsk were welcomed into the fold of those to inspire affection & be supported, the eastern glamour of their name irresistible.
Subsequently, Dynamo fell at the quarter-final hurdle of that season’s European Cup, at the same stage of the following year’s UEFA Cup &, three years on, again in the quarter finals of the Cup-Winners’ Cup (to eventual winners KV Mechelen in a delightful tie), which proved to be the apogee of their profile in the continental club tournaments, despite subsequent regular forays into via their success in Belarussian domestic soccer, where their early pre-eminence has dimmed a little over the last decade but with no correlative consequences in our heart.
Regarding the badge itself, a large part of its desirable quality resides in the exoticism of the Cyrillic representation of ‘Minsk’, of course, but the physical nature of this object appeals in a particular manner, its unpolished metal ground appearing every inch the epitome of the utilitarian Soviet-era Communist product that its vintage suggests it very much is, & somewhat at variance with the flowing elegance of the ‘D’ logo, which regular visitors might recognise as being very similar in style to that of Dynamo Moscow’s emblem, suggesting something of an officially-sanctioned regularity of design applicable to or imposed upon any & all of the numerous ‘Dynamos’.
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