Dundalk win hearts and minds

From size of stadia to size of budgets, from the number of internationals in their respective ranks to previous achievements in elite European competition — by whatever measurement you chose to compare and contrast Dundalk and Zenit St Petersburg, the two clubs seemed separated by a gulf of almost cosmic proportions going into their Europa League game in Tallaght on Thursday night.

And that was even before a Russian journalist almost casually accentuated that perception by asking striker Artem Dzyuba at the pre-match press conference how it felt to be facing a team “from a different…” — and, here, the translator, in deference to her host audience, perhaps, offered an almost embarrassed little smile — “…stratosphere.”

Something else which would seem, at first glance, to mark Zenit out as an entity from a galaxy far, far away — yet one with serious designs on colonising the football world we all live in — is that the club operates a comprehensive English language website and Twitter account.