SOVIET FOOTBALL TEAM

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27501, 8 November 1954, Page 12

SOVIET FOOTBALL TEAM

ARRIVAL IN BRITAIN TO PLAY ARSENAL

PUBLIC INTEREST HIGH (Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) LONDON, Nov. 5. Attention is again being focused on Russian sportsmen by the arrival this week of the Spartak Association football team, which, after several victories in Belgium, is to play Arsenal at Highbury on Tuesday and Wolverhampton Wanderers at Wolverhampton on November 16. “The Times” comments that after the fine football played by the Moscow Dynamos during their tour of Britain in 1945, their defeat of Arsenal in Moscow last month, the Spartaks’ recent victories, and reports of the strict discipline for Soviet teams off the field, interest in the Russian standard of the game has risen to an unprecedented height. All ( ,000 tickets for the SpartakArsenal game have been sold, and a capacity gate is expected at Wolverhampton. The interest in the Russians has led; naturally, to the newspapers reporting fairly fully the arrival o£ the Spartak •team in London yesterday. The first thing the Russians wanted was a Turkish bath, and tyey set off from their hotel in a motor coach.

The Russians looked tough and healthy. Their average age is somewhere in the early 20’s. Their diet is a worry to the hotel manager. He has to have consultations on every meal with the doctor they have brought with them. Their senior trainer was carefully diplo-

mafic about the Spartaks’ chances against Arsenal. He said: “The play will be very, very interesting. Whatever happens it will be a wonderful match, but who will win it is impossible to say.”