SOCCER-Putin drive to swallow Crimea halts at gates of soccer stadiums

By Dmitriy Rogovitskiy SIMFEROPOL, Crimea, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Vladimir Putin may have annexed Crimea in one fell swoop, seizing control of government and economy; but the president's power apparently stops at the gates of Crimean soccer stadiums caught now in a twilight world between Russia and Ukraine. After the 2014 annexation, declared illegal by Kiev and the West, clubs from the peninsula could no longer compete in the Ukrainian league. Three played several months in Russia's 2nd Division, but in December the European body UEFA banned them from Russian competition. UEFA, itself caught in the prickly undergrowth of East-West politics, declared Crimea, for want of a better term, a "special zone". Yuri Vetokha, President of the newly-founded Crimean Football Union (CFU), told Reuters the biggest problem facing him was documentation. Crimean players already had Russian passports, but their contracts were tied to the Football Federation of Ukraine (FFU), which deems Crimea their territory. "The FFU refuse to send us their "transfer clearance" so that the footballers can play under the jurisdiction of Russian football," he said in an interview. "As a result, 80 percent of our players, including youth and children's sides, are considered still to be Ukrainian." FIFA and UEFA, he said, stick to the letter of the law. "Our players are stuck between Russia and Ukraine," the 43-year-old CFU head said. For a territory as passionate about soccer as Crimea, a painful predicament. NO SPONSORS Russia annexed Crimea shortly after the fall of a pro-Russian president in Kiev amid mass demonstrations Moscow said were engineered by the West. The peninsula, largely Russian-speaking and home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, fell to Moscow with little resistance and much waving of Russian flags. But fully uncoupling Crimea from Ukraine was never going to be easy. Crimea's water comes from Ukraine and its power comes from the Ukrainian grid, a fact underlined by recent sabotage of power lines that plunged the peninsula into darkness. Russian engineers are now completing an alternative "energy bridge". For Crimean soccer there is no such quick fix. Excluded from Russian and Ukrainian championships, Crimea has founded its own league of eight teams. TSK-Tavriya and FC Sevastopol, with bigger budgets and their own buses, used to play in the Ukrainian Premiership. The others had played only at regional amateur level. Crimeans hope despite current economic hardship and some Western sanctions - major global companies are absent, credit cards not taken, phone networks are limited - life,and football, will improve. "In a year and a half, Putin has done more for us than Ukraine did in two decades," Anton, a fan of the Rubin Yalta team, commented. "Our football may not be much at the moment, but at least we are free and Russia has been supporting our league." Across the way, Ukrainian terraces ring to chants deriding Putin, his annexation of Crimea and what they see as his support for a pro-Russian rebellion in eastern Ukraine that has killed over 8,000. But in Crimea the pro-Ukrainian, let alone anti-Russian voice is rarely heard. Russian state subsidies cannot match lucrative commercial sponsorship deals. "Unfortunately, we do not have a title sponsor," Vetokha said of his league. "The sanctions do not allow large companies like Adidas, Puma or Nike to come to Crimea." Rubin Yalta's Avangard stadium hosted some 800 spectators last weekend for a match against FC Yevpatoriya. The stadium is aged and when matches are not taking place, it is used as a market place, with stalls selling clothes and furniture. Close to the Avangard there stands a hoarding, an image of a smiling, thoughtful Putin, the Russian red-white-blue and the simple exortation: "Crimea. Russia. Forever." PIZZA DELIVERY UEFA has declined so far to recognise the Crimean league, but Vetokha is aiming for acceptance by the end of 2018. "They were afraid the matches would be very one-sided and that dogs and cats would run onto the pitch," Vetokha said. "However, nothing out of the ordinary has happened." "Some footballers earn money on the side elsewhere. The president of one of the clubs told me that when the wages were held back, some players even worked as pizza delivery boys." In soccer, passion can be the midwife of curious invention. In Ukraine, plans are afoot to create a "doppelgaenger" of top Crimean club Tavriya a short hop away on Ukrainian-controlled territory, bringing it into the Ukrainian premiership and under the UEFA umbrella. Whether any current Tavriya players would cross to this parallel dimension is open to question. Moscow, however, seeks to anchor Crimea firmly in Russia's sporting culture, exploiting the balmy Black Sea climate that made it the Russians' playground, home to youth summer camps and seaside homes, in Soviet times. Vetokha said Russian Sports Minister and RFU President Vitaly Mutko would speak soon with Putin about setting up training camps for Russian clubs who currently use Turkey. "In three or four years...Russia will once again play here against the top sides of world football. I'm sure the Cold War will not last for ever...and Crimea will cease to be an irritant to the footballing community." (Reporting By Dmitriy Rogovitskiy; additional reporting by Igor Nitsak in Kiev, Alexander Winning in Simferopol; writing by Ralph Boulton; editing by Ossian Shine, Richard Balmforth)