Igor Shalimov left with zero – Sport – Kommersant

The first club in the Russian Premier League, which decided to part with the head coach during this season, was the Yekaterinburg “Ural”. The team, which started the championship with four defeats in a row, dismissed Igor Shalimov, doing exactly the same as a year ago, when, after a series of failures at the start of the tournament, they replaced Shalimov as Yuri Matveev as a mentor.

“Ural” announcedthat Igor Shalimov was dismissed from the post of head coach of the club. Thus, Yekaterinburg became the first club of the Russian Premier League (RPL) to part ways with the head of the coaching staff during the next season that opened in mid-July.

Curiously, the “Ural” almost copied his last year’s trick. In the previous championship, he also decided to fire his mentor – Yuri Matveev – in August, after a series of failures at the start of the tournament. Then the Yekaterinburgers scored one point in three rounds. Post vacated by Matveev got Shalimov, and the choice of club management could be considered correct. Ural, albeit with great difficulty, retained its place in the top division at the end of the championship, finishing 12th.

The parting with Igor Shalimov in August 2022 was already caused by a new series of starting misfires of the club, whose summer selection campaign looked very modest.

He lost all four matches in the championship: with CSKA, Orenburg, Krasnodar and Spartak. The giants, including those in great shape and leading in the tournament to the army team and Spartak, Ural lost with a two-goal difference, and the Orenburgers, who had just returned to the RPL, defeated it with a score of 3: 0. At the same time, after four rounds in the league, except for Ural, there were no clubs left that did not score points. Closest to the outsider is its newcomer Torpedo with one point.

It is unlikely that the impatience of the Yekaterinburg leadership greatly surprised 53-year-old Igor Shalimov. A famous player in the past of the national teams of the USSR and Russia, Spartak, as well as a number of foreign clubs, including Inter, he first headed the RPL club – Elista Uralan – in 2002, being a very young specialist, and lasted 11 months. After that, and before finding himself in the Urals, Shalimov coached three more clubs in the elite domestic division and each time he was convinced that mentors in Russian teams rarely enjoy a large credit of trust. The longest – about a year and a half – he managed to work in Krasnodar. The period of Shalimov’s stay in Khimki and Akhmat was less than a year. In Ural, he was close to at least blocking the one-year milestone, but just a couple of days weren’t enough.

Yekaterinburg residents have already announced that Evgeny Averyanov, who worked as an assistant to Igor Shalimov, has been appointed acting head coach.

It is he who will prepare the team for the match of the fifth round – in it “Ural” on Friday will play on the road with the Voronezh “Torch”. Meanwhile, commenting on the situation, the press officer of the Urals Pavel Zavyalov said “RIA News”that “the club will announce further personnel decisions additionally.”

Various sources interpreted these words unambiguously – as a recognition that Ural still intends to fill the vacancy with another coach. “RB-Sport” assumes that, studying the candidacies of a full-fledged and “long-term” successor to Igor Shalimov, the club is considering two options. The first is Denis Klyuev, who manages Ural-2, the reserve team of the main team. The second is the invitation of a coach who has already worked in the Yekaterinburg system.

Alexey Dospekhov