Talk:The Death Match

What was the Score?
The article currently reads in relevant part:

...tapped it into in the German net to make the score 2-1. By half-time, FC Start were yet another goal up.

The second half was almost an anti-climax. Each side scored twice. Towards the end of the match, with FC Start in an almost unbeatable position at 5-1

This does not add up. If at halftime, the score was 3-1, and each side scored twice during the second half, the score at the end would be 5-3.

Someone who knows the score needs to fix this. --Davecampbell (talk) 19:44, 29 September 2009 (UTC) the best score is of German mainstream heads or German mainstream testicles, — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.158.34.229 (talk) 00:42, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Lack of balance
Article of rife with uncited accusations of biased refereeing, threats to the Ukrainian players, etc. It is not easy to defend the Nazis, but we must be sure that what we are describing is the match as it happened, not the match as portrayed in films etc. Kevin McE (talk) 09:29, 13 February 2010 (UTC)


 * lack of balance indeed. In the 1970s there was an investigation because of the alleged war crime conducted by the Stuttgart state attorneys in charge of this. It came to nothing as the Soviets didnt produce witnesses or evidence to the events or for the Luftwaffeunit involved in the game. That soviet prisoners of war were extremely likely to die in german prison camps is wellknown and doesnt need a lost game as explanation. This pic here seems to be a group pic of the german and ukrainian team. However its quite regular: http://www.google.de/imgres?imgurl=http://redlog.pl/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/ilustracje/flakelf.jpg&imgrefurl=http://redlog.pl/2008/08/09/mecz-smierci-fc-start-vs-flakelf/&usg=__d2cleM-wE1iMvfu_INNtiskDS7I=&h=266&w=457&sz=51&hl=de&start=1&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=oe_va9X_EYGL-M:&tbnh=75&tbnw=128&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dflakelf%26um%3D1%26hl%3Dde%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:de:official%26tbs%3Disch:1 --Tresckow (talk) 02:41, 20 June 2010 (UTC)


 * We're really not required to conduct original historical researches to find out new facts; it's enough if all the Soviet sources who are reported as saying things actually said those things... AnonMoos (talk) 11:14, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * AnonMoos, We are not required to conduct original research, but we are required to provide evidence and references of the actual events and not invented fairy tales. Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 12:50, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Citations needed
1.	Introduction mentions a 2005 investigation by Hamburg’s Prosecution Office but how it got to its verdict isn’t mentioned in the article

2.	Article often mentions ‘soviet propaganda’ but doesn’t cite any references to these

3.	Section ‘Disclosing the myth’ dispels three myths but does not cite any references

4.	Section ‘Disclosing the myth’ says ‘Numerous other interviews were taken’ – surely there should be details of these AndrewAfresh (talk) 19:15, 6 February 2011 (UTC)


 * The German version of this page covers part of 1. above. It refers to an investigation conducted by the Hanseatischen Oberlandesgericht Hamburg (essentially "Hamburg Prosecutor's Office), "Die unter dem Aktenzeichen JPr 161/85 geführten Ermittlungen ergaben jedoch keine weiteren Anhaltspunkte, woraufhin das Verfahren eingestellt wurde. Laut einer Mitteilung vom 30. September 1985,


 * „Die von der Staatsanwaltschaft in dieser Sache geführten Ermittlungen führten zu keiner Klärung des Vorfalls. Auch nach Maßgabe der von den sowjetischen Behörden erbetenen und von diesen auch geleisteten Rechtshilfe konnte weder ein Vorgang der behaupteten Art selbst noch ein – wie von der Stuttgarter Zeitung beschrieben – Sonderlager für sowjetische Kriegsgefangene noch eine Luftwaffeneinheit, die für die behauptete Ausschreibung in Betracht kommen könnte, festgestellt werden. Die sowjetischen Behörden haben keinen Zeugen für die Tat benannt. Da weitere Beweismittel nicht zur Verfügung standen, mußte das Verfahren im März 1976 eingestellt werden. Oberstaatsanwalt Beck“."


 * Which amounts to:


 * "However, the investigation under case number JPr 161/85 yielded no further evidence - at which point the proceedings were closed. According to a notice from September 30th, 1985:


 * 'The investigation conducted by the public prosecutor's office in this case led to no further clarification of the incident. Even with respect to aid requested of and delivered by Soviet agencies, neither an alleged incident of this sort nor a - as described in Stuttgart's newspaper - special holding prison for Soviet POWS nor a suitable Luftwaffe unit meeting the prescribed events could be determined. The Soviet agencies named no witnesses in regard to the act. Because no further evidence is available, the proceedings had to be discontinued in March of 1976.


 * Senior Prosecutor Beck'"


 * The German discussion page then notes that the case was reopened under case number 1001 AR 1/02 between 2002 and 2005, but the same conclusion was reached. The suspected multiple murders could not be confirmed and the threats of reprisal if the Ukrainian team won could not be verified. There conclusion was that the deaths were not linked with the fact the Ukranians had won the football match.UltimaGecko (talk) 11:55, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

File:The Death Match Monument2.JPG Nominated for Deletion
And where is the "myth"? It does not matter when they killed these people, immediately after the game or later. The main thing - that they were killed.87.249.223.217 (talk) 16:00, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
 * The myth is about them being related to the so-called "The Death Match", because of which according to the lying Soviet propaganda they were killed. You need to be careful with introducing photos that could be challenged if no proper explanation is provided. Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 12:54, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Recent article in DER SPIEGEL
Here is an Der Spiegel article about this story HagenUK (talk) 10:51, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Completely new version
Being historian specialized in Eastern Europe I could not believe my eyes: An article which completely ignores all the Russian and Ukrainian publications since 1992 concerning the „Death Match“!

Instead of referring to documents and analyses exposed in the Ukrainian WP http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%87_%D1%81%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%82%D1%96 and the Russian WP http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%87_%D1%81%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%82%D0%B8I  this article was simply based on a publication by James Riordan who in the opinion of Russian historians is a storyteller (he obviously invented his football career in the USSR… http://www.utro.ru/articles/2008/04/18/731703.shtml) and a book by Andrew Dougan who wrote about Hollywood movie stars (George Clooney, Robin Williams), but in no way is specialist for Soviet Union and WWII. Interesting that his really bad book is praised by the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/18609772 though it ignores completely all the published documents and does not give sources!

So I rewrote the whole piece giving exactly all the sources (many of them can be verified in the internet). F.Gradski (talk) 23:12, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

- I feel the current version is still bad. "the deathmatch is a myth, but the players are still later arrested, murdered for different trivial reasons" is what I get after spending lots of time reading the whole article. I feel we need a better introduction to summarize this article. It's also weird that the whole article is written in the tone of debunking something, instead of just state the research results, when read by someone who never heard such historical event. --Ahyangyi (talk) 11:03, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I had the same reaction as Ahyangyi in reading this article as it stands, nor am I particularly motivated to tidy up such a badly formatted piece with information is scattered all over the place. The subject of the article is "The Death Match". You don't introduce a subject by challenging it as mythology and continuously weaving a rationale for debunking it throughout the body. While I know a little on the subject and have read non-English sources questioning the veracity of the Soviet portrayal of the match and am, personally, of the opinion that it was probably misrepresented and later took on a life of its own in popular culture, that's merely my POV. Building a critique into the tone of the article isn't encyclopaedic. The formula to be applied is simple: subject and a later criticism section if merited. I'm sorry, F.Gradski, but I'm sorely tempted to revert to the version in place up to July when you overwrote it. You may be specialized but that doesn't mean that you have the requisite skills to write a good article (particularly as your English is far too weak to do so without serious assistance). --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:11, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Agreed. This article is embarrassing. An article about an event that spends more than two thirds in actually debunking it, with a passion which seems non-encyclopaedic. Compare it with the Russian language article (I don't speak Russian, so I used google translate). An article about a contested event simply cannot spend more than half its length arguing against it and claiming it's a myth. It seems Wikipedia is taking sides. The andf (talk) 22:24, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

Dougan
I rewrote the explanation to Dougan's funny book which had a big influence on the reports of the American and British press. But the book is a complete hoax because Dougans repeats the Soviet version not knowing that the story was deconstructed after 1991. Evidently he is not able to read the Russian and Ukrainian sources. It is a funny thing that in his book he cites eyewitness like the player Goncharenko who explained in all the Ukrainian medias in 1992 (50 years after the match) that there was no death match, that it was a normal match. It is a absolutely ahistorical book written by a non-specialist who completely ignores modern histroiography. Actually today there was a Berlin conference about Soviet football http://www.hsozkult.de/event/id/termine-35542?language=en, and Dougan's book was pulled to pieces. 46.88.52.87 (talk) 00:28, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

= Bread Factory No. 1? =

The book Soccer Under the Swastika: Stories of Survival and Resistance During the Holocaust (listed in the Further Reading Section), refers to FC start as representing Bread Factory no. 3 (on Degtyarevskaya Street), not no. 1. Is there a verifiable source to confirm which Bread Factory FC Start represented?

= Re subsection 'The First Two Deaths' =

Please could it be made clear whether or not Olexander Tkoshenko was a pre-war player in Dynamo or any FC? The description of him looks a little imbalanced against the account of the second man to die in captivity. After reading comments above made 7 yrs ago, I appreciate overall the effort that has been made to assemble this article into readability, well done.Cloptonson (talk) 13:21, 8 November 2020 (UTC)