Tallinna JK Legion - I covered three matches, one in the Estonian Cup at the home of Tallinna JK Legion – the Stadion Wismari, which in reality is little more than a pitch and changing rooms. Legion is in the third flight of Estonian football. They are a talented young team, but they urgently need better facilities. Only a new stadium can give them that, but attendances at football matches in Estonia are sparse.

School ground - Perhaps, it would be better in Paide, where Paide Linnameeskond were entertaining top-flight league leaders Nõmme Kalju. It wasn’t. It is a small town with only 8000 inhabitants, and therefore a small support base. Paide doesn’t have its own stadium – they play on a school pitch – it’s telling that the school has been demolished. The local government will assist the club as will a UEFA project. It is a sign of Estonia’s sporting suffering.

Occupation - Between the World Wars Estonia emerged from colonialism – it was an unwilling part of the Russian Empire until 1918, when, against the odds, this tiny nation won the War of Independence, but it was short-lived. By 1940 Estonia was occupied again by the now defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). A year later the occupiers were driven out, but Estonia soon found that it had exchanged one overlord for another, as Nazi Germany ruled. In 1944 the Nazis were once again replaced by the Soviet Union, but this time Estonian sport was all but annihilated. Former footballers and administrators were sent to Siberia, if they were lucky.

Refuge in Iceland - During the interwar years even the most talented sporting icons in Estonia had to work other jobs. Some were police officers. This was later used against them. Former goalkeeper, Evald Mikson was a war criminal, but his crimes occurred during Nazi rule when he was a member of the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police). He escaped to Sweden in 1944, claiming he had been imprisoned for two years for not delivering full reports to his superiors. He was later denounced by the Estonian International Commission for Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, for having signed death warrants. He found refuge in Iceland, changed his name, sired two talented footballers, one of whom, Jóhannes Eðvaldsson is a Celtic legend. Mikson died in December 1993, aged 82 – Iceland was coming to terms with its past by investigating war crimes at the time.

A bandy champion - Before that the USSR had targeted Estonian sporting greats. One of Estonia’s greatest sportsmen, Heinrich Uukkivi won championships in three sports, football, bandy and ice-hockey, twice in different sports in the same year. In 1940 he was conscripted into the Red Army. He was later captured, and upon release he was dismissed from the army and sent to prison camp in Russia. He died there in April 1943, aged just 30.

A terrible fate - The fate of two others is even worse. Eduard Eelma played 58 times for Estonia between 1921 and 1938, representing Tallinna Jalgpalli Klubi with distinction – they merged with SK Legion Tallinn in January 2008 to form Tallinna JK Legion. In the inter-war years they won the Estonian Championship in 1926 and 1928. They were dissolved in 1941 and again in 2008 – the latter time in the merger. Eelma held the Estonian scoring record of 21 until it was broken by the current manager of Pärnu JK Vaprus, Indrek Zelinski, in 2002. It’s unclear why Eelma was arrested, let alone executed, by the NKVD in November 1941.

Kaarma - Astonishingly, a team-mate of Eelma with club and country shared his fate. Harald Kaarma won Estonia’s Top Division title with two different clubs JK Tallinna Kalev in 1923 and Tallinna Jalgpalli Klubi in 1926. As football was an amateur sport in those days, he had to work another job – a police officer. That would later cost him dear – his life, in fact. Deported to Russia and jailed there in 1941, he was judicially murdered on August 19th 1942. On the 76th anniversary his old club Kalev played Tallinna Flora. Kaarma was remembered by Kalev’s goal-scorer, Kevin Rääbis, who considered it an honour to dedicate his goal to Kaarma. Flora’s manager, Jürgen Henn, dedicated his team’s victory to Kaarma, even though the twice champion of Estonia had never played for Flora.

And when the Red Army returned in 1944, Estonian football was dismantled. It took independence in the 1990s for Estonian football to emerge again. Has any nation suffered a worse sporting fate at the hands of colonial ‘masters’ than Estonia?