Anderson’s tales and other problems of volleyball “Zenith”

He told reporters that the club learned about Anderson’s plans to leave Zenit from press publications. Then the American’s agent contacted the club’s management. Matthew himself does not get in touch.

The legend of Kazan did not take root in St. Petersburg

For seven seasons, Anderson was the star of Zenit Kazan and received the honor of raising his personalized jersey under the arches of the volleyball arena in the capital of Tatarstan. Then I decided to change the situation. Anderson had a valid contract with the Shanghai club. The American terminated it in order to return to Russia, and Zenit St. Petersburg already paid a penalty to the Chinese.

This deal had many pitfalls. First of all, the geopolitical situation. Only the leaders of American volleyball did not object to the performances of one of the leaders of the national team in the Russian championship. Zenit sought to get a universal volleyball player capable of brilliantly playing in several key positions.

They counted on Anderson in the new season, but for some reason he decided to spend it in the Turkish championship, despite his existing contract with Zenit. The Russian agent of the American volleyball player Dmitry Rezvanov believes that the new club will have to pay the St. Petersburg team a penalty of $950 thousand. Another agent, Luca Novi, has a different opinion. He handles Anderson’s business outside of Russia. According to Novi, the American can leave for free due to the situation in the world.

Experts who know the world of volleyball well put forward a different version of the American’s motives. It is believed that Anderson wants to change Zenit St. Petersburg to Ziraatbank from Ankara out of a desire to better prepare for the 2024 Olympics. After all, the Russian Championship is an exhausting tournament with numerous and long flights. And training at Zenit seemed too intense to Anderson. Although the club met him halfway in everything, at the first request he let him go home to see his wife and children.

It looks like Zenit will have to come to terms with the fact that the money they paid to the Chinese for Anderson will be wasted. The International Football Federation recently extended permission for foreign players to unilaterally suspend contracts with Russian and Ukrainian clubs until June 2024. This decision was made in March last year, and the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) did the same. So agent Novi hopes that even now everything will be okay for his client.

Pashitsky’s case

Zenit has already been burned by a similar situation immediately after the start of the SVO. In the Russian Super League, those wishing to terminate contracts by agreement of the parties parted ways last spring on good terms. The only exception was Dmitry Pashitsky, who played for Zenit. Having a valid contract with the St. Petersburg team, he left for Lotus Trefl from Gdansk, filling out a transfer sheet through the FIVB.

Adding to the scandal of this transfer was the fact that in St. Petersburg Pashitsky was granted Russian citizenship so that he would not be considered a foreign player. Dmitry was born in Kyiv, but he and his family moved to Riga as a child, where he began playing volleyball. He began his professional career in Estonian teams, and then grew into a European-level master in France and Poland.

In 2017, Pashitsky moved from Gdansk to Kemerovo, where he became the champion of Russia as part of Kuzbass. Following coach Tuomas Sammelvuo, in the summer of 2000, the Ukrainian legionnaire moved to St. Petersburg. And the next day after signing the contract with Zenit, he announced that he had applied for Russian citizenship.

It didn’t take long to get a new passport. The St. Petersburg club was very interested in ensuring that Pashitsky was not considered a foreign player. After all, only two foreigners can be involved in the Russian championship. Immediately after the start of the SVO, Pashitsky remembered his roots.

Zenit treated the player’s condition with understanding and granted Dmitry an indefinite leave. He himself rushed to Gdansk, from where he came to Russia, and at first even denied rumors about leaving Zenit with a valid contract. Only these were not rumors. At a press conference held by Lotus Trefl, Paszycki appeared in the club’s uniform, and its president Dariusz Gadomski said: “We, with the help of the FIVB, will achieve permission for Paszycki to play for our team. It was not possible to agree with Zenit on the peaceful termination of the agreement.”

In the St. Petersburg club the words of the Polish functionary were perceived with bewilderment. “Zenit” even issued an official press release: “We are surprised that Dmitry appeared in the equipment of another club, and from the lips of a representative of this club words were heard about the termination of Pashitsky’s contract. This is not true.”

In this statement, Zenit representatives emphasized that if Dmitry, while in St. Petersburg, had officially asked to leave the club, they would have met him halfway. Pashitsky’s demarche was simply not understood in St. Petersburg. Nothing is known about the fate of the Russian passport issued to the volleyball player after his transfer from Kemerovo Kuzbass.

Non-volleyball problems

The precedent associated with Pashitsky’s contract in Poland under the current agreement with Zenit is what the agent who assigned Anderson to the Turkish team wants to use. This will create huge problems for Zenit. It is not clear whether there is an urgent need to fill the legionary position now. And finding a master like Anderson, who is also capable of playing in several positions, is not so easy. Even in more prosperous times, there weren’t many offers on the transfer market.

The second foreign position in the St. Petersburg club is now occupied by Zhenya Grebennikov. The son of a famous Soviet volleyball player, who left to play under contract in Rennes, was born and raised in France. It is not surprising that he was involved in the national team of this country. Even the name Evgeniy was shortened to something more understandable to the French. So far, the volleyball federation has not banned players with contracts with Russian clubs from playing for the national team. Grebennikov is currently fighting for the “tricolors” at the European Championship.

But there are no guarantees that the leaders of French volleyball will not follow the leaders of French basketball. They issued an ultimatum banning their stars, who had gone to work in Russia, from playing for the national team. So we were left at the World Cup without the main point guard Thomas Ertel, who chose to earn about one and a half million euros per season, not counting bonuses, at Zenit.

The head coach of the French basketball team, Vincent Collet, did not count on the second French legionnaire playing for the St. Petersburg club, Adrien Moerman, but without Ertel, the “tricolors” failed at the 2023 World Cup. They even lost to the Latvian national team and fell out of the medal contenders after the first group stage. NBA star Nicolas Batum launched an angry tirade, replicated in the French press: “I don’t care about politics, but why don’t those who should play for the national team play?”

Where are the guarantees that Grebennikov will not be given the same ultimatum as Ertel, and Zhenya will not choose a team that in a year will have every opportunity to win the Olympic tournament for the second time in a row?

Poletaev and Klyuka need replacements

With Anderson’s departure, all of Zenit’s personnel problems were exposed. Last season, the American was the team’s top scorer, successfully playing in the post-player and diagonal positions, replacing the injury-prone Viktor Poletaev in this capacity. He missed half the games last season. Zenit’s main player Egor Klyuka is also susceptible to injury. He was out for a quarter of the season.

The St. Petersburg club was created just six years ago and chose for itself a binding slogan: “Born to Champions.” Only after winning silver medals in the first season were the St. Petersburg team able to repeat this achievement only once in 2021. Even Sammelvuo, invited from Kemerovo and working part-time with the Russian national team, failed to bring the slogan to life.

Zenit, under the leadership of Sidelnikov, enters the new season with a load of problems. At the Platonov Memorial in the final, the hosts lost to Yaroslavich – 0:3. The next test of readiness for the national championship will be the Centenary Cup, dedicated, as the name suggests, to the centenary of domestic volleyball.

The first stage of these competitions will take place at the Platonov Academy from September 8 to 10. The St. Petersburg team’s rivals will be Belgorod’s Belogorye, Kazan’s Zenit and Nizhny Novgorod’s ASK. St. Petersburg volleyball fans will not see either Anderson or Grebennikov on the court with Zenit.