Arsen Zakharyan won the Champions League – Kommersant

In the near future, the main transfer deal for the Russian Premier League (RPL) will be completed within the current summer window. 20-year-old Dynamo midfielder Arsen Zakharyan will make a rare transition for domestic football – not just to one of the leading leagues in Europe, but to one of its leading clubs. Zakharyan, who was interested in Chelsea last summer, is bought by Real Sociedad for the amount of €12 million. In the last Spanish championship, he took fourth place, and now he is preparing to start in the group stage of the Champions League.

The fact that the transfer of Arsen Zakharyan from Dynamo to Real Sociedad can be considered a fait accompli, said the head coach of the Moscow club Marcel Lichka. During an on-air interview “Match Premier” before the match of the fourth round of the national championship, in which Dynamo hosted Baltika (see the material on this page), he warned that Zakharyan, although he “will be at the stadium”, will not play in it. “We can already say that he is a player of the Spanish club Real Sociedad,” Lichka added. After the match, the general director of the Moscow club Pavel Pivovarov confirmed the information about the transfer of Zakharyan to journalists: “The agreement in principle has been reached, today Zakharyan flies for a medical examination, but the deal has not yet been closed.” Information about the transfer was also disseminated by the largest Spanish media resources, such as As and Marca. According to them, the player is likely to sign either a four-year or five-year contract with Real Sociedad.

Dynamo will receive compensation for him in the amount of €12 million.

By the standards of today’s football market, this is the price of a player who may not have the characteristics of a superstar, but at least strong enough and in demand.

In any case, in this deal, apparently, it is worth highlighting not the financial, but the image component. Transitions from the Russian Premier League to the Big Five championships are not uncommon. Sometimes they are made by domestic football players, but most often rather modest clubs, such as Le Havre, where Daler Kuzyaev went from Zenit this summer, show interest in them. Situations where a Russian attracts the attention of a team with serious ambitions are rare. In recent years, only the transfers of Lokomotiv and CSKA players Alexei Miranchuk and Alexander Golovin can serve as examples. Miranchuk left for the Italian Atalanta in 2020, Golovin went to the French Monaco in 2018.

In this sense, the case of Arsen Zakharyan, who recently turned 20, is extremely remarkable. He was a transfer target of a “big” European club a year ago. In the summer of 2022, Zakharyan tried to acquire the London Chelsea. However, it was not possible to complete the deal, as the representatives of the Russian and British sides officially formulated, “due to technical reasons”, apparently, which boiled down to the impossibility of organizing a money transfer from the UK to Russia, which is under sanctions in connection with a special military operation in Ukraine, and the club whose the sponsor is VTB Bank.

At the same time, at some point, it seemed that Arsen Zakharyan, because of that story, missed the chance to break through to the elite football level. Chelsea’s interest in him seemed quite understandable.

The midfielder, combining attacking skills with dispatching, in his teenage years gave the impression of a real football prodigy.

Having made his Dynamo debut at the end of 2020, he quickly established himself in the first team and gained leadership status, at the age of 18, he made his debut in the Russian national team before anyone else, and The Guardian included him in their version of 60 of the brightest young talents in European football .

But Zakharyan spent the past season, like his club, which collapsed from third place in the championship to ninth, not so convincingly, including in terms of statistics. In the championship, for example, he had only four goals scored and seven assists. Zakharyan started the new season without sparkle – two goals in five official matches. The Dynamo team played the most successful in the previous round, defeating the defending champion Zenit 3:2 on the road. But in it, Zakharyan was replaced in the first half due to an injury.

Nevertheless, the club did not abandon the idea of ​​​​purchasing it, which, albeit with some stretch, should, like Chelsea, be classified as giants. Real Sociedad did a great job in the last Spanish league. He finished fourth in it, conceding ahead only three too obvious favorites – Barcelona, ​​​​Real Madrid and Atlético – and secured the right to start without selection in the Champions League group stage: the Sansebastians did not break into it for ten years. As a rule, participation in this tournament makes clubs more picky about potential newcomers.

True, it seems that circumstances contributed to the transfer of Arsen Zakharyan in many respects. First of all, this is the unexpected loss of veteran David Silva by Real Sociedad, who tore his cruciate ligaments. Silva was an extremely important player for the club, who performed approximately the same functions as Zakharyan in Dynamo – a winger or an attacking midfielder. At the end of July, he announced his retirement, and with the acquisition of the Dutchman Donny van de Beek from Manchester United, who was considered by the management of Real Sociedad as a priority option to replace Silva, he did not grow together.

At the same time, Arsen Zakharyan, according to Cadena SER, has also always liked the management of the Spanish club and his coach Imanol Alguasil, who appreciates the Russian for “passing accuracy” and “ability to break into free zones” from the depths. He fits perfectly into his concept in every sense – both in terms of age (even with the 37-year-old David Silva, Real Sociedad was among the youngest teams in its championship, and the average age of its base did not reach 25 years old), and in terms of a set of qualities . Alguacil prefers a 4-3-3 formation with a clear attacking roll. Zakharyan can play in such a position in several positions at once.

Alexey Dospekhov