"WAR MINUS THE SHOOTING"

As the 2026 World Cup gets under way, Tony Shaw and Alan McDougall revisit eight football matches played during the Cold War that turned the beautiful game into a battleground of ideology, identity and state power

- Tony Shaw and Alan McDougall

1 The fog of war at White Hart Lane

A chaotic 1945 friendly between Arsenal and Dynamo Moscow saw wartime alliance splintered by Cold War rivalry

It’s not often that football friendlies spark conflict - especially between allies. The match between Arsenal and Dynamo Moscow, part of a tour of Britain by the Soviet Union’s top team in November 1945, was intended to celebrate the Allies’ recent victory over Nazism. But things went badly wrong - on and off the pitch.

Playing at Tottenham Hotspur’s White Hart Lane stadium - Arsenal’s ground at Highbury was unavailable - the British team bent the rules by fielding ringers such as England’s ‘Wizard of Dribble’, Stanley Matthews. And the Soviet referee, perhaps with half a mind on the gulags, tested neutrality to the limits.

Thick London fog, a real pea-souper, added confusion - and controversy. Visibility was so limited that players could barely distinguish teammates from opponents. Arsenal claimed that Dynamo cheated by sometimes fielding more than 11 men, slipping on substitutes unnoticed. Dynamo accused Arsenal of trying to maim its players. Soviet officials later alleged that Arsenal’s “capitalist” manager, George Allison, had tried to get the game called off once his team had fallen behind because he'd gambled a fortune on a home victory.

The match in the mist revealed a striking contrast in styles. Dynamo played a fast, fluid collective game built on discipline, short passing and constant movement. Players interchanged positions, drifting across the pitch to create space. For British spectators accustomed to more direct football, the effect was startling. Perhaps it offered proof of the vitality of communism - and a glimpse of the future of football.