Badge of the Day #100: Karpaty Lviv #3

Yes, we here at TOoT might already be the proud owners of a pair of badges representing our beloved Karpaty Lviv/Lvov, as posted here back in December of 2013, but the opportunity to acquire this 'essential' vintage object, redolent with Ostalgie, proved too enticing to pass up, & thus it recently came to be. Again, the football & pine trees feature as in one of the previous examples, but the format of the design is a bit different, thus justifying the small investment.

This last season has, alas, not been the best for the mighty Karpaty, suffering a nine-point deduction & finishing second-bottom of the Ukranian Premier League, but they shall doubtless rise again soon, ideally to do battle with the equally fabulous Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk, such gallant runners-up in the Europa League Final, for domestic supremacy.

Football - bloomin' heck!

[image from Wikipedia]

Please, this glorious morning, let’s all take a moment to appreciate & celebrate the momentous achievement of Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk in reaching the 2014-15 Europa League Final, prevailing 1 – 0 in last night’s semi-final, second leg against Napoli to secure a 2 – 1 aggregate victory.

In these days of Champions’ League homogeneity (even allowing for the results of the semis of that competition this season at least producing the only acceptable final possible, & we’ve certainly never been fans of Juventus here at TOoT), the Europa, following on from the UEFA Cup, continues to allow some of the continent’s less-fashionable & unheralded, unfancied clubs at shot at glory, with an unlikely name emerging blinking into the Final spotlight (dimmed though that might be in comparison to the glare of the CL) with relative regularity (think, only since the turn of the millennium, of the likes of Deportivo Alaves, Middlesbrough, Fulham, Sporting Braga, for instance), claiming a few notable scalps along the way – Dnipro, lest we forget, qualified from a group featuring Internazionale & Saint-Etienne, & then overcame Olympiakos, Ajax, Club Brugge (3 of which favourite teams would happily be amongst TOoT’s semi-finalists in either competition, of course) & now most latterly & notably, not least given their manager Rafael Benitez’s career record in winning European tournaments with numerous clubs, Napoli -  &, for that, should be fondly clasped to our football-loving bosoms for the variety & colour it provides, the upsetting of the ‘massive clubs’ narrative.

Dnipro, of course, are a team that have held a place in our hearts since the early-1980s when they were known to the world by their Soviet-era Russian name, Dnepr Dnepropetrovsk, which, ineffably, impossibly romantic as it is, we still prefer in our habitual ‘Ostalgic’ fashion, & it really is fabulous to see them reach such a pinnacle, which allows us to dream on that they might actually win the trophy, stacked though the odds would seem to be against them – bring it on!

In a clear case of life imitating art, it's interesting to note that, over at the idealised football universe of 'Delusions of Randomness', Dnepr Dnepropetrovsk reached the final of last season's European Champions' Cup, there to lose narrowly to RWD Molenbeek, the third time in history they've alas fallen at the ultimate hurdle of that competition: one day, maybe.

Alles Les Verts, etc.

Palpable excitement building through this afternoon & into the evening at TOoT Towers as the group stages of the Europa League kick-off, with section F featuring three of the more romantic & our very favourite continental names in the form of Saint-Etienne, Internazionale & the former Dnepr Dnepropetrovsk (preferring to remain true to the Soviet Russian styling, of course), who, in any sane world, would constitute three of any season’s Champions’ League semi-finalists (with Atlético Madrid completing the line-up), let alone this particular tournament’s, impossible now though the latter is  – what a shame that, through the vagaries of the draw, one of these fine clubs must be eliminated from European competition even before the end of the year: may the best teams win & the deserving pair subsequently prevail.

(mention should also be made, perhaps, of the other rather interesting name completing Group F, Qarabag of Azerbaijan)

Badge of the Day #3 (Dnepr Dnepropetrovsk)

And so the exhibition of items from the collection continues, today featuring the badge & mighty name indeed of Dnepr Dnepropetrovsk, which must have come to attention in 1984-85 when the club’s European profile was at its highest – they reached that season’s European Cup quarter-final stage, only to be eliminated on penalties by Bordeaux following two 1 – 1 draws - during the period of the club’s zenith of domestic success in the Soviet Union during the 1980s (twice champions & twice runners-up in the league).

Again, 'Ostalgie' features here, at least in terms of nomenclature, with the Russian/Soviet-era ‘Dnepr’ enduring in preference to the subsequent Ukrainianization into ‘Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk’.
Of course, a cyrillic-scripted badge is going to be attractive for its ‘difference’ in a Western context, so this feature, in addition to the fabulous name, makes the object one very much of desire.