There can hardly be anyone that isn’t aware that yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the Munich air disaster, marked at Manchester United’s Old Trafford by a perfectly preserved one minutes silence, followed by perfectly executed 2-1 defeat at the hands of arch rivals Manchester City. Now no disrespect is intended, but I’ve felt a little bit of overload from prolonged exposure to those familiar yet still haunting images of tragedy and loss, honest no disrespect intended.
Can you imagine a football team being wiped out in an air crash and no one finding out? Well it happened in 1979 in the former Soviet Union when a plane carrying Pakhtakor (http://www.esectorsolutions.com/projects/index.php/browse/.esp.website/view/.103/) hit another plane at 2400 metres killing everyone on board both planes.
Six hours away in Uzbekistan awaiting family, friends, and supporters all remained ignorant of the disaster, and the authorities hushed the event up. Unable to fulfill their remaining fixtures Pakhtakor stopped playing with no explanation. All the public were ever told was that Pakhtakor would have their position in the Premier League guaranteed for 3 years irrespective of it’s league position. The public at large assumed the club were being punished for offending the state in some way, and it wasn’t until 12 years later that the truth became widely known.
So while Man U’s lost boys are rightly remembered spare a thought for the players of Uzbekistan’s top team who didn’t even receive a public funeral.
