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Real Madrid is worth an estimated $4,75 billion, according to Forbes.

Cub legends include some of the biggest names that football has ever seen, including the original Ronaldo (R9) and Cristiano Ronaldo (CR7).

Sheriff Tiraspol, on the other hand, don’t have as illustrious a history to call on, but last night they did manage to pull off what has been labelled the biggest shock in Champions League history.

Better still, the win was secured via an outstanding 89th-minute strike from Luxembourg midfielder Sebastien Thill, who rocketed a half-volley into the top corner.

You can see that strike from the four-minute mark:

This is the first time that a team from Moldova has ever qualified for the Champions League, and the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu is a pretty impressive location for your first-ever away match.

The team also won its first home match, against Ukraine’s Shakhtar Donetsk.

In order to qualify, Sheriff had to go through four qualifying rounds, ultimately defeating Dinamo Zagreb in a two-leg playoff last month to book their spot.

That alone makes it an incredible upset, but then you consider that the football club exists in a city, Tiraspol, that doesn’t consider itself part of Moldova.

Here’s The New York Times:

It is, instead, the self-styled capital of Transnistria — the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, to give its proper name — a breakaway republic on the left bank of the Dniester river, a 25-mile wide sliver of land with its own currency (the Transnistrian ruble), its own flag (red and green, with a hammer and sickle) and its own government (the Supreme Soviet).

The team might be underdogs on Europe’s biggest stage, but it’s a very different scenario in the domestic league:

It has won all but two Moldovan titles this century. It plays in a state-of-the-art stadium complex built at a cost of $200 million in a league where many of its opponents play on ramshackle fields, surrounded by wasteland, in front of only a few dozen fans…

The source of the team’s financial power is in its name. Sheriff is the centerpiece of the private economy in Transnistria, a conglomerate founded by two former KGB agents in the chaotic days of the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Transnistria’s war of independence from Moldova.

Image: Sergei Gapon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Its roots, reportedly, lie in the region’s historic smuggling. Transnistria’s liminal status, its porous borders and its opaque history — it is home to one of Europe’s largest weapons dumps — have long made it a haven for all manner of illicit activity, from gunrunning to drug-trafficking and cigarette counterfeiting.

This is taking some of the shine off the fairytale story.

It doesn’t change the fact that Sheriff were rank outsiders coming into the group stages, and have now beaten European football royalty.

Tonight’s major talking point will be whether or not Manchester United can bounce back from a disappointing run of results against Villarreal, the team that pipped them on penalties in last year’s Europa League final.

[source:nytimes]