“The Best Stadium in Siberia”
A bold statement, perhaps, but not without foundation. OK, it was the club who made the claim, and who is honestly going to be able to thoroughly assess all the stadia in an area the size of a continent? One look down the fans’ walkway before an evening match, however, and you feel there’s little point in starting the contest.
The Geolog Stadium, home of FC Tyumen, is a strikingly impressive sight lit up at night. The uneven lattice design resembles the Bird’s Nest used in the Beijing Olympics six years ago, and the main stand rises five floors up, towering over spectators as they queue for tickets. There is a fully equipped medical rehabilitation centre, a gym complete with a steam room, jacuzzi and swimming pool, and even a hotel, as well as VIP boxes with plush padded seats with heating. There are plans to build a restaurant, a sports bar and a club store. Even the staircases are faux marble with gleaming banisters. Either end of the main stand, the corners of the ground are open, as the stands behind the goals sweep up the natural slope that rises behind the western terrace, making the total capacity 13,057.
When one considers the average attendance for the previous few seasons has been less than 2,000, the intentions for this impressive arena become clear. FC Tyumen’s recent history has seen them crash out of the Russian Premier League, withdraw the senior team from all competitions, then work their way back through the system from the third division through to the second-tier FNL via some painful near misses in the promotion rat race of the Ural Povolzhye second division. It is a powerful statement of intent to rebuild the original stadium in such impressive style, but an outlay as extravagant as this demands success on the field.
In fact, when a delegation from Ural Ekaterinburg inspected the Geolog during the World Cup, they declared it suitable for their Premier League requirements, and are due to relocate their home league matches to Tyumen while their own Tsentralny Stadium is redeveloped in time for the World Cup in four years’ time. Having a Premier League side take up residency will be an intriguing dry run. The message is clear: the Geolog belongs at the highest level.
Even the policing is being enforced with a view to hosting larger scale events than FNL league games. There was a waist-high fence surrounding the running track last season (for what purpose it was unclear; the average away support could be counted on one hand, or even on one finger come to think of it, so mass pitch invasions were unlikely). This has been replaced with a two-metre-high fence, and is still patrolled by armed police with sniffer dogs, who have barely had to move an inch in my three years of watching. Rising above both ends are two huge scoreboards, one with a live relay of the game, and replays, the other with a teletext-style delivery of the goalscorers and teamsheets. These enormous boards seem out of place when there is inevitably such a small group of fans gathered underneath, but this just adds to the aura of the ground. One cannot help but feel like this is a place on the move; there is, however, a strange appeal to enjoying lower league football in such luxury.
Part of the sustainability of a project of this magnitude involves the adjacent training pitch, flanked by its own stand holding 550 people, which doubles up as a regional centre of excellence, where numerous youth tournaments are held, as well as hosting the reserve team. Both pitches have state of the art rubber crumb artificial surfaces with undersoil heating (although admittedly either end of the winter break, the sheer volume of snow often makes it a slightly futile exercise). The days of limbs being shredded to pieces by vicious plastic pitches are gone; for obvious reasons, the modern artificial surface is essential to avoid cancelled matches, and provides conditions conducive to passing football. Another factor in justifying the stadium is the accessibility to the public; the running track provides training facilities for the public, and the pitch has been used for photo shoots and live music events during the summer.
A tantalising taste of the power of a packed Geolog was delivered spectacularly last October in the Russian Cup with the visit of Zenit St Petersburg. Having already knocked out top flight Alania Vladikavkaz the season before, when the ground was only half filled, FK Tyumen rose to the occasion and beat a team that contained no fewer than 10 full internationals, including Arshavin, Shirokov, Tymoschuk and Witsel. The atmosphere was truly electric; even the disappointingly large gap between the stands and the pitch itself couldn’t damage the capacity crowd’s appetite.
If all goes to plan, it won’t be long before nights like these become more regular. Tyumen is a historic city that was founded by the great Cossack commander Yermak as the first settlement in Siberia, and it lies on the old trade routes from the far east to Europe. Its modern history as the hub of many major oil and gas companies is an equally impressive tale; the population increased 20-fold in the last century as young professionals flooded to the city.
The importance of underground exploration in the region gave rise to the very name of the ground; the Geologist Stadium. The team has been known by eight different names in its 53-year history, the first of which was also Geolog. Other incarnations such as Gazovik (no prizes for guessing the relevance of this name either), Neftyanik (oil worker) and Stroitel (builder) are all nods towards the importance of industry in this city. In fact, it was not until they were last in the Premier League in 1997 that the name of the city itself was formally introduced to the name of the team as it is today.
Tyumen deserves a stadium as spectacular as the Geolog. Now the responsibility lies with last season’s Ural Povolzhe manager of the year Konstantin Galkin to galvanize the small squad he guided to promotion in June, and complete the job.
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Follow Andrew Flint on Twitter: @AndrewMijFlint
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