CSKA stood its ground – Newspaper Kommersant No. 157 (7358) of 08/29/2022

Following the results of the seventh round of the Russian Championship, Zenit regained the lead, which was briefly taken over by Spartak. The Petersburgers predictably beat Ural, throwing him four unanswered goals, and scored 17 points. In the central match of the Rostov-CSKA tour, a goalless draw was recorded, thanks to which the army team defended third place in the competition with Krasnodar.

After victories over “Torch” and reaching the first place “Spartak”, of course, hardly hoped that he would remain on it after the end of the seventh round. A draw, and even more so a defeat of Zenit in a match with Ural, would be just a miracle, and there are no miracles in confrontations of opponents so different in class. Yekaterinburg residents overslept the start of the championship, and even appointment Viktor Goncharenko to the post of head coach did not bring them out of this lethargic dream. In six meetings, they scraped together only one point and only once managed to hit the opponents’ gates.

Nevertheless, “Ural” rested. In the first half, he gave practically nothing to create Zenit in front, and he himself had a good moment when Mikhail Kerzhakov repelled the most dangerous header of Eric Bikfalvi. Immediately there were analogies with the previous match of St. Petersburg against another outsider – “Torpedo”, with whom they suffered pretty hard and broke his resistance only in the end. Then they managed to break the score in the 84th minute, but now they didn’t have to wait so long. At the beginning of the second half, Malcolm finished off the ball after a save by the hosts’ goalkeeper Ilya Pomazun. Soon he, together with Wendel, brought Andrey Mostovoy to the empty net, and then Malcolm scored a double, running away from the Yekaterinburg defenders as if they were standing. It took the guests ten minutes to do everything.

“Ural” just fell apart, and “Zenith” through the efforts of Rodrigan scored more, winning a landslide victory – 4:0.

The team of Sergei Semak with 17 points again led the Premier League, ahead of Spartak by one point, and which of them is more worthy of leadership in the current segment of the championship, it will become clear in the next round, when the Petersburgers come to visit Muscovites.

Well, this weekend another important match took place between the clubs in the group of leaders. CSKA closed the top three with 13 points, while Rostov was fifth with 12 points. Moreover, the army team with 16 goals in six games were the best in terms of performance. Rostovites, along with Zenit and Dynamo, did not suffer a single defeat. True, already in the course of the tour, both those and others were squeezed out by Krasnodar. The “bulls” after the victory over “Torpedo” at its temporary home arena in Khimki – 4:1 – had 14 points. At the same time, Sochi, which played on Friday, pushed the yellow-blues aside.

As part of CSKA, of course, special attention should have been paid to the attacking trio of Jorge Carrascal-Jesus Medina-Fyodor Chalov, each of which had four goals. In Rostov, the most serious threat was Nikolay Komlichenko-Daniil Utkin, and especially on set pieces.

However, already in the opening the hosts could have succeeded from the game, if not for Igor Akinfeev, who neutralized Kirill Shchetinin’s breakthrough. But in general, the match was of a rather closed nature, and the main actors were in the shadows, or rather, under close guardianship. The same Komlichenko was pasted very strictly and hard, although Dmitry Poloz in one of the episodes originally struck from under him with his heel and almost used the positional help of his partner.

The army triangle did not work either. It seemed that Chalov still earned a penalty when Danil Glebov covered him in the penalty area, but VAR sided with the Rostov player in that borderline situation and did not find a violation of the rules. Before the break, Ivan Oblyakov scored twice more at the opponent’s goal, but in both cases he did not even hit the target. So the teams went to the locker rooms with the score 0:0.

Against the backdrop of five major victories, and on Sunday they generally won exclusively by a margin of three or four goals, the central match of the tour really stood apart.

Unless there was hope for the second half that there would be goals in Rostov-on-Don. However, the defense still leveled the attack, and if anything, the goalkeepers cleaned up the flaws. The goalkeeper of the hosts, Sergei Pesyakov, corrected his own mistake, when he unsuccessfully hit the ball to Medina and immediately blocked the Paraguayan’s kick.

Perhaps, CSKA in the second half looked more persistent and owned the initiative. Rostov often defended with a low block and waited for their chance to counterattack or set-piece. No matter how pushing or shoving Komlichenko, the army team lost the air to him only once, and the attacker missed. Utkin tried to score from a free-kick, but Akinfeev bailed out. And the red-blue almost fired a replacement in the face of Adolfo Gaich. The Argentinean, receiving very little playing time, rammed the Rostov defense alone, approached the goal at an acute angle, and only the post with Pesyakov saved the hosts from trouble.

Probably, both CSKA and Rostov did not play the best match, but thanks to this goalless draw, the army team still outperformed Krasnodar in additional indicators and again took third place.

Alexander Ilyin