Sheriff Tiraspol

FC Sheriff reached the Champions League group stage for the first time last season and have drawn Manchester United in the Europa League.

“In Trinidad, we have a lot of players of my talent, but they just don’t get the opportunity to come to Europe. Two seasons ago, it was defeat to Qarabag of Azerbaijan in the Champions League, then the “Our fans know that players come here to develop and make a bigger step in their career. For a start, they are dominant in Moldova to the point of parody. Sheriff now have only six Moldovans in their 32-man squad, one of whom is a back-up goalkeeper, with more than a dozen other nationalities represented. To add to the confusion, Sheriff have been ordered to play their home European games in Chisinau — a decision taken by UEFA because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We have had to operate” — he paused to get the right wording— “between things.” It declared independence from the rest of the country — which sits between Romania to the east and O’Connor tells a story about a match he attended where he saw the bus of another local top-flight team pulling up behind the stand. One man who took full advantage of those possibilities was Viktor Gushan, a former policeman who set up Sheriff in 1993 with a colleague, Ilya Kazmaly. The only English club to do so, in fact, is Spurs, who faced Zimbru Chisinau in the 1999-00 UEFA Cup and Sheriff Tiraspol in the 2013-14 Europa League. This time last year, Sheriff were billed as the first Moldovan football club to qualify for the Champions League group phase, which was sort of true and sort of isn’t.