FC Zenit Mauritius: The story behind the obscure Twitter account
Nowadays there’s a phenomenal amount of English speaking football related accounts from some of the leagues you’d least expect.
The Russian Premier League is one of those with a handful of the top clubs having English speaking accounts for international fans.
Current Russian Premier League champions Zenit St. Petersburg are no different and have in my opinion the best English speaking page in the league, the admins nailing fan engagement and showing how to champion social. This is something rare to find as so many accounts out there are ‘faceless’.
The Northern Capital behemoths also have a handful of international accounts catered for an array of non-English speakers with Twitter pages in Spanish, Portuguese, German, Finnish, Japanese, and more that I can’t think off the top of my head!
I’ve followed the Russian game on and off for quite a few years. It all started in the early 2000’s when I played a Play-By-Mail (PBM) game — to the kids out there, a game where you would fill in your squad line ups, transfers, etc and post your turn sheet (basically a piece of paper with all your requests on), all the submissions would be then put into PBM company’s software and would churn out the results.
I somehow ended up with Torpedo Moscow, I can’t remember how I did with them but I remember I’d visit their website a lot and see how the ‘real’ team was doing.
I never chose a Russian team to support but took a particular interest in a few of the ‘controversial’ teams — people from the Russian football community will know the clubs I’m talking about!
About two years ago I decided to follow Zenit. My reasons were that I was a huge fan of Hulk and loved the old stadium, the Petrovsky. To me, it was a proper old fashioned Russian stadium or Eastern European stadium with its iconic floodlights towering over the stands.
Moreover, I’m someone who lives and breathes social and on Twitter follow a handful of RPL club accounts, including the Zenit English speaking account.
I followed the club’s tweets and loved how entertaining and engaging they were and got sucked in!
Before I’m dubbed a ‘glory hunter’ I follow Leyton Orient and I also follow a lot of clubs around the world and have an interest in many leagues such as the Campeonato Brasileiro, Argentine Primera División, and Turkish Süper Lig.
When I found out RPL games were streamed via YouTube that spurred my interest in Zenit and Russian football even more.
As you’ll see from the Zenit Mauritius bio, I’m half English, half Mauritian and British born.
The island is football obsessed and like many countries across the world, the EPL dominates.
A lot of the population are either Liverpool or Manchester United fans (yep this makes me sick too! 🤮)
Last year, and literally about a month before the first national lockdown I decided that I would create a Twitter account and spread the word about the best team in Russia to the tiny Indian Ocean Island.
I was very lucky (and thankful) the English speaking account mentioned the Mauritius account.
The ramifications lead to a lot of tweets saying “FB idolo!” I had no idea what that meant — ‘Facebook idolo’ I thought 🤔 no, that didn’t seem right — yep I’m showing my age here!
Promoting the club to the island is a long process and is certainly a marathon not a sprint, but despite the EPL dominating I really like the challenge. It’s been good to see fan engagement from other parts of the world and from unlikely places too such as Indonesia and The Philippines.
I can’t remember the first game I watched whilst tweeting via the account but one game sticks out was when Zenit demolished Ural 7–1 at home. On the day, the Iranian Zlatan/Messi whichever nickname you give Sardar Azmoun scored a hat-trick, Russian international Artem Dzyuba bagged two, former Barça player Malcom scored his first goal in a Zenit shirt, and fellow South American team mate Sebastián Driussi also got on the score sheet.
This was the last game before the RPL was halted due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The next three months were literally staying in and watching Zenit! Below was a personal favourite, Malcom receiving his player of the month award via a drone — the video went viral!
Last year, as we all experienced was a tough year, however, for Zenit the club achieved a lot from the Zenit Women’s team being launched to winning the league and two cup doubles!
Let’s hope in 2021 more success happens on and off the field for The Blue-White-Sky-Blues!
For anyone out there who wants to follow an alternative league I highly recommend the RPL and the online community. It might not have the glitz and glam of the EPL, BUT there’s never a dull moment!
I highly recommend following Russian Football News and WTI where you can get the latest info on the Russian game.
You can also follow Zenit Mauritius — @FCZenit_MRU and my personal account @daviddhannoo.
DAVAI ZENIT!
