Sheriff Tiraspol is new to the Champions League: a liquor factory, a television station, a football club

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Sheriff Tiraspol prevailed against Zagreb in the playoffs

Photo: Jurij Kodrun / Getty Images

A coach is not a sheriff, but with this club it makes sense to call Jurij Wernydub that.

The coach from Ukraine is responsible for the success of FC Sheriff Tiraspol club, which is taking part in the Champions League for the first time in its history.

Since December last year, the Ukrainian has been the coach of the Moldovan series champions, who will celebrate his premier in the premier class this Wednesday against the top Ukrainian club Shakhtar Donetsk.

After five appearances in the Europa League, qualifying for the group stage of the Champions League is the greatest international success of the club, which was established in 1996, to date.

In the playoffs they prevailed against the Croatian top club Dinamo Zagreb.

First team from Moldova in the premier class

A first not only for the FC Sheriff, but also for the country.

A team from the Republic of Moldova has never reached the group stage of the premier class.

The attraction of the game is not that today, Wernydub, a Ukrainian coach in the Champions League, plays a Ukrainian team in the 1993/94 season as a player for Chemnitzer FC.

No, the game is made special by the political circumstances that only exist in Europe in the post-Soviet area, where football, oligarchy and politics are closely interwoven.

Because with Sheriff Tiraspol and Shakhtar Donetsk, not only two clubs that are dependent on oligarchs meet.

Both come from regions ruled by separatists.

Tiraspol from breakaway Transnistria, Donetsk from Donbass.

Shakhtar has been in exile since 2014

What distinguishes the clubs are the circumstances and effects these conflicts have on the two of them.

While Sheriff not only plays his games in Transnistria, but is also a symbol of power in this policy, Shakhtar had to leave Donetsk because of the armed conflict that began by pro-Russian separatists in 2014.

Since then, games by Shakhtar in the Donbass Arena, which was built in 2009, have only appeared in one of the world's most popular football simulations.

It is a war that has been going on for seven years, with around 13,000 dead, which also had an impact on the life of the sheriff trainer Wernydub.

From 2011 to 2019 this coach was with Zorya Luhansk.

Since pro-Russian separatists have also proclaimed a "People's Republic" in Luhansk, the association, like Shakhtar, had to leave its homeland.

The conflict over Transnistria began in the last years of the Soviet Union.

From 1990 onwards, pro-Romanian nationalists pushed for the then Soviet Republic of Moldova to join Romania, which sparked resistance in the predominantly Russian-speaking Transnistria.

This resulted in an armed conflict that could only be ended in 1992 through the mediation of Russia and its troops stationed in Transnistria.

A frozen conflict

The result is a conflict that has now been frozen for 30 years, in which the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, as it is called, acts like a sovereign state.

However, Transnistria is diplomatically recognized neither by the protecting power Russia nor by any other state.

This pseudo-statehood offered the two former police officers Wiktor Guschan and Ilja Kasmaly the best conditions to build not only an economic empire with their company Sheriff, which they founded in 1993, but also a real state within the state.

In addition to a petrol station and supermarket chain, a television station, the only mobile operator in Transnistria, a publishing house, an advertising agency or a liqueur factory, the group also owns a large bakery.

16,000 Sheriff employees

According to research by the opposition Russian "Novaya Gazeta", up to 16,000 of the almost 500,000 inhabitants of the breakaway region are supposed to be employed by Sheriff. In 2020, the sheriff corporation will be responsible for 60 percent of Transnistria's economic output.

The Group's portfolio does not only include commercial enterprises, but also politics.

The two policemen, Guschan and Kasmaly, who had risen to become oligarchs, not only financed the government in some cases, but also granted themselves their own party with the »renewal«.

Today this represents 29 of a total of 33 members in Transnistria's parliament.

Political dependencies that make Transnistria a paradise for corruption and crime.

In the best Eastern European oligarch tradition, the two ex-police officers also made football their stage.

FC Sheriff Tiraspol has a permanent subscription to the Moldovan championship.

The championship of a country with which Transnistria has actually had nothing to do with for 30 years.

But football, of all things, offers the two bustling oligarchs the opportunity to present their power to the entire Republic of Moldova. From this evening on on the big European stage.