Akhmat dismissed head coach Sergei Tashuev

In the Russian Premier League (RPL), the first coaching resignation took place. Akhmat announced the termination of the contract with the team’s coach Sergei Tashuev by agreement of the parties. This happened after the third defeat of Grozny in the recently launched championship, and in total they have lost five out of six matches this season. For the time being, Isa Baitiev, who worked with the youth team of the club, will act as head coach.

Following the results of the opening matches of the season, several specialists in the RPL were formally threatened with resignation, but the first to fall on this sword of Damocles was the head coach of Akhmat. Although Sochi, Baltika, Orenburg also suffered three defeats in the championship, while Fakel has zero points in four rounds. Below Grozny, who are now in the Premier League in 11th place, is Rubin.

Even though they had already lost twice in the group stage of the Russian Cup, Sergey Tashuev did not seem to be a clear candidate for the first coaching resignation.

Moreover, quite recently, the 64-year-old mentor achieved quite a lot of success for the Grozny club in his post, taking fifth place with him and repeating the best result in the RPL. Six years ago, Rashid Rakhimov managed to do this. In addition, Akhmat set club records for the number of wins (15), goals (51) and points (50) in one championship. Moreover, bronze medals were within easy reach, because the backlog from Spartak, who finished third, was only four points.

Recall, Tashuev took over the team already in the course of last season, at the end of September 2022, after Andrey Talalaev was dismissed. And this change turned out to be very successful indeed. Everything was so good that in June Tashuev signed a new and long-term contract with Grozny until May 31, 2026. In addition, they practically retained the composition. In any case, none of the leading players of Akhmat left, and it was assumed that he would be the same formidable force this season.

However, something went wrong, and in the starting period of the new championship, Tashuev’s team won only one victory, defeating Sochi on the road (2: 1).

At the same time, she lost to Wings of the Soviets (1: 2), which now show bright football, CSKA (2: 3) in a scandalous match with five penalties, three deletions and strange refereeing, and frankly looked bad except in the last meeting with ” Betting Nizhny Novgorod “(0:2). Probably, Tashuev was pulled along by a home defeat in the Cup from the debutant of the Premier League Baltika. Actually, these two bad games in a row, apparently, decided his fate.

In general, with such teams as Akhmat, which find it difficult to compete on a stable basis with the top RPL clubs and occupy the niche of strong middle peasants in the league, it often happens that a rise is followed by a certain, sometimes even a very deep decline. In addition, objective difficulties, namely injuries, made themselves felt. For this reason, Lechi Sadulaev, Anton Shvets, Milos Shatara and Nene Gbamble are still absent. However, new players are just on the way. In particular, only recently the Grozny team acquired the Brazilian defensive midfielder Camila and the Bulgarian winger Svetoslav Kovachev, who have yet to adapt both in the new team and in the unfamiliar championship. And there are problems with the Bosnian central defender Jasmin Celikovich. In the match with Nizhny Novgorod, he made a terrible mistake, because of which Akhmat conceded the second goal.

For now, 56-year-old Isa Baitiev, who worked with the youth team, will lead the main team as acting head coach.

By the way, in 2011 he already had to act in a similar role after the then Terek parted ways with the famous Dutchman Ruud Gullit. And then Baitiev gave way to Stanislav Cherchesov himself. And now, as noted in the official statement regarding the resignation of Tashuev, the Grozny club is going to decide on the candidacy of a new head coach in the near future. By the way, Cherchesov is free again.

Alexander Ilyin