“It was difficult to blame the players for their indifference” – Kommersant FM

The ninth round of the Russian Premier League ended with a match between the two weakest teams in the tournament. Voronezh “Fakel”, which occupies the last place in the table, lost to “Rubin” (0:1) at home and became the main contender for relegation from the RPL. After the victory, the club from Kazan rose to 12th place. Kommersant FM sports columnist Vladimir Osipov believes that without money, teams will not be able to compete in the major leagues.

Usually, all the attention of football fans is focused on the top of the standings, where the fight for the championship is going on, and the outsiders, well, what can we say about them?

On the one hand, everything is true, but that’s what happened last season. Now, forgive this term, there are no “passengers” in the RPL. But here it is worth talking about money. After all, Fakel is the poorest team in the tournament. The total cost of the players here is slightly above €10 million. Rubin is much richer, the price of football players in the club is almost three times higher. And even in the match with Zenit, the Kazan team showed a decent game.

Perhaps this is why head coach Rashid Rakhimov confidently says that his team is not in its place in the table:

“I believe that in terms of the game we are not in the place we should be in, and the team itself feels it. It’s important that they have confidence in themselves and don’t lose that confidence.”

But money is money, and football is football. There are examples in the RPL where a club with a small budget produces results. For example, Sergei Yuran’s Paris NN, where the cost of players is only €15 million, is in seventh place. Not to mention Krylia Sovetov, which is in second place, ahead of Zenit. Meanwhile, the total valuation of the players in the Samara team is about €30 million.

But “Fakel” has no achievements this season, although the team’s support at home matches is always crazy. Voronezh is now one of the few cities where the introduction of Fan ID has not affected attendance at all. The stadium here is always full.

Even when the game took place on Monday, about 12 thousand people gathered in the stands. Fakel fans prepared a huge banner to greet the players. The inscription read: “Voronezh will forgive everything except impersonality.”

And it was difficult to blame the players for their indifference. They tried, but the outcome of a difficult, sticky match was decided by a single goal, scored by an Argentine from Kazan, Valentin Vada.

This victory allowed Rubin to soar from the very bottom of the standings to 12th place, while Fakel remained in last place.

At the same time, if we take into account that Voronezh scored only five goals in nine championship matches (and even the change of coach did not help the team), then the team becomes one of the main contenders for relegation from the RPL.

As for the fight for the championship, here so far, in addition to Zenit, they call Krasnodar. True, it will be possible to seriously talk about the title of the southerners only closer to winter, says football expert Igor Shalimov.

“The winter break is very long. You have a month of vacation, then two months of preparation, then the transfer window opens. We have to decide which players to take and who to leave. But, it seems to me, if they are on par with Zenit before the winter, then they will have a chance.”

Now we can only state that Krasnodar is in first place in the table and in third place in terms of funding. If we talk about money, then Zenit is beyond competition. The value of the players of the current champion exceeds €150 million. In second position, Spartak has a little more than €100 million, and Krasnodar has about €80 million.

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