Real Madrid suffered one of the biggest Champions League upsets in recent memory Tuesday, when the Spanish power fell at home to Sheriff Tiraspol, a first-time participant in the tournament representing a nation that, in some ways, does not even exist.
Tiraspol is the principal city of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, also known as Transnistria or Trans-Dniester, a breakaway region that separated itself from Moldova just as that country was declaring its independence amid the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Since then, Transnistria has been granted a large degree of autonomy from Moldova and uses its own currency, but it is not officially recognized by any member of the United Nations.
Members of Real Madrid could thus be forgiven if they had trouble finding Transnistria on a map. (Once this author was able to do so himself, he could report that it is a sliver of land nestled between Moldova to the west, on the other side of the Dniester River, and Ukraine to the east.)
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Nacho, a suitably well-compensated defender for the 13-time Champions League titlists, admitted Monday that “we don’t know much about the opponent.”
Those players learned a thing or two about Sheriff Tiraspol, though, after that club stunned its hosts in Madrid, 2-1. An 89th-minute rocket off the foot of Sebastien Thill, a midfielder from Luxembourg, sealed Real’s fate, stunned the thousands of fans at Santiago Bernabéu Stadium and led to jubilant celebrations from the Sheriff side.
“For us, this is a dream come true to have won here,” Sheriff captain Frank Castañeda said. “We’re so happy and just enjoying it. We have full faith in what we’ve been doing, and things are going well for us. We didn’t just come here to sit around. We know how good our players are, and luckily for us Madrid weren’t able to take their chances and we took ours.”
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Jasurbek Yakhshiboev, a right winger from Uzbekistan, opened the scoring for Sheriff with a header in the 25th minute, and it was not until the 65th minute that Real was able to answer with a penalty conversion from Karim Benzema. A forward from France, Benzema boasts the fame and high salary typical of the elite players in Real’s lineups.
Benzema’s estimated market value of $27.5 million, as gauged by the German soccer website Transfermarkt, places him 15th on Real Madrid’s roster. By way of comparison, Castañeda checks in as Sheriff’s highest-value player at $1.1 million, per the website, while Thill is valued at $440,000, although his strike in Madrid could certainly up that number.
Nevertheless, it was the Spanish side that was left to bemoan its poor fortune.
“We were unlucky,” Madrid Coach Carlo Ancelotti lamented. “Everything went their way, and nothing went our way. More than concerned, we are sad. We lost because of details.”
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“This is soccer,” said Casemiro, a Brazilian midfielder rated by Transfermarkt as Real’s player with the highest market value, at $77 million. “We were in control during the entire match and had many scoring chances. They had only two and scored twice.”
As measured by GDP per capita (via the International Monetary Fund), Moldova is second only to Ukraine as the poorest country in Europe. Well-paying jobs are hard to come by in much of Transnistria, but Sheriff gets its name and support from the region’s biggest conglomerate, allowing the club to bring in foreign talent. Founded in 1997, Sheriff has won Moldova’s top league in 19 of the past 21 years, and in August it became the first club from that league to make it through qualifying rounds and reach the group stage of the Champions League. As of Tuesday, Sheriff had an enormous victory on the world stage.
In terms of betting odds, per ESPN, Castañeda and Co. were easily the biggest underdogs to earn a Champions League win in the past three seasons.
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Having beaten Ukraine’s Shakhtar Donetsk in its first group-stage match, the Transnistrian club sits for the moment alone atop a quartet that includes another side renowned among soccer fans worldwide, Inter Milan, in addition to Real.
Of course, there’s a difference between being well-known and well-liked, and plenty of soccer fans outside Madrid were undoubtedly delighted to see Los Blancos get taken down a peg. No club has won the Champions League more often.
Adding another layer of schadenfreude for many observers was the club’s leading role in the aborted attempt to form an ultraexclusive Super League this year. Real Madrid President Florentino Pérez emerged as the face of the plan to peel off 12 of Europe’s most prestigious clubs, which would have dealt a crippling blow to the Champions League. The plan caused outrage across the continent that clearly surprised Pérez and other officials involved in the would-be lucrative project.
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Had the Super League gotten off the ground, Madrid would never again have had to think about facing a side as lowly as Sheriff, let alone confront the embarrassment of losing to the visitors from the far side of the Dnieper.
Now, though, Nacho, Benzema, Casemiro and their teammates will presumably be a motivated — and better informed — bunch when they travel to Tiraspol in November for the away leg of their group-stage series.
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