The Moldovan Derby

The Republic of Moldova was part of the Soviet Union. Today, it is an independent country with a self-declared Transnistrian region in the East, an autonomous Turkish-speaking Gagauzian province in the South, a border to Ukraine to the North, one to Romania and the EU to the West. Photographing the Moldovan national football is the attempt to show daily life in a nation looking for normality, new identities and new belongings while facing its controversial past and present. The stadium is a space where identities are shared and outed reflecting the society outside of it. As Soviet heritage, sport culture plays an important role here and though football is a new phenomenon, it succeds reflecting the context: along with symbols of the past disappearing from the landscape of the stadia, new ones appear and occasionally underlying conflicts are acerbated. The football national landscape embodies most of the constrasts Moldova is rich on. It provides a centre around which local identities are reinforced but at the same time it works as sole common ground for communication where clubs from the different regions play every Sunday on a shared field, sitting side by side on the bench while running for the goal to win.