Things to know about Sheriff
Last season: 2nd
Qualified through: League position, 2nd round
Coach: Oleg Turcanu
Star: Vladislav Stoyanov
Links to Örebro: Former Sheriff player Razak Omotoyossi played against Örebro as late as 22 May this year (Örebro won 3-1)
Comment: There’s a long and good story here, recently covered by Sweden’s best football journalist Erik Niva. Sheriff Tiraspol is the pride of the largely Russian speaking, independence seeking Transnistrian region of Moldova. I don’t intend to give you the full story here but the team is named Sheriff after its insanely rich owner, former KGB officer Viktor Gushan – nick-named “the Sheriff”. Soon after the club was founded in 1997 it became the most dominating team in European league football, winning the league every year (and often by a ridiculous margin) from 2001 to 2010. Then, this year, something happened. Dacia Chisinau broke the spell. How? I’m not sure but I can imagine the loss of Moldovan star Suvarov was costly. The sheriff is expected to invest more after this embarrassment, so we risk facing a hungry, revitalized tiger here. The team is very much a foreign legion, with no less than five African players, another seven players from countries near by and only six Moldovan nationals.
This is how we beat them: This is a strong football team from a weak footballing country. Sheriff has qualified for the Europa League group stage for two years in a row (losing out to Olympiakos and Basel in the Champions League play-offs) and last year, both times ending up with five points but beating sides like Twente (2009) and Dynamo Kyiv (2010) at home. They have kicked out teams like Dinamo Zagreb and Slavia Prague and has not been directly kicked out one single time in their 10-year long spell of Champions League qualifiers. It will be tough
Chance of Örebro winning: Depends on what Sheriff does on the transfer market, but with the current squad we have a decent 40% chance.
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