“Krasnodar” beat “Ural”: an overview of the Russian Cup match

Krasnodar became CSKA’s rival in the superfinal of the Fonbet Cup of Russia. He broke into it, defeating Ural in the second stage of the Way of the Regions final in his field – 2:1.

The reformatted draw of the Russian Cup gave a lot of anomalies, and several favorites were embarrassed in it at once. But the composition of the decisive round, whatever one may say, did not come out sensational.

It is even strange, given the huge number of sensations that were born during the competition, that in the end it will still cross two unconditional domestic giants.

CSKA got into it from the RPL Way, Krasnodar from the Way of Regions, in the meeting that crowned it, having coped with the last hope of an outsider squad for a big take-off.

True, everything in this “small” cup final was unsteady. The Krasnodar stadium, which gathered an audience of three and a half dozen thousand people, which is simply gigantic in modern times, when half-empty or even empty stands are almost the norm, seetheed, smelling the smell of blood that was about to pour from an opponent, quickly, as soon as the opponent was inflicted the first wound. Moreover, an unexpected character acted as the main predator.

At the heart of the “Ural” in the first place, the figure of the goalkeeper attracted the attention of the grenadier parameters. The fact is that it was not the disqualified Sergey Pomazun, but the reservist Oleg Baklov, about whom nothing really was known: is he reliable, in what aspects is he good? And so he showed that he was well prepared for an important match, having coped with the difficult blow of Ilzat Akhmetov. But after him there was a corner, and here Baklov could not resist. Caio is actually a mighty rock in the center of the Krasnodar defense, which never claimed bombardment laurels. But looking at how he flies into the air in the middle of useless guardians, how cunningly, with a rebound from the ground, and an unsolved goalkeeper, hits his head, one could decide that scoring for the Brazilian is a familiar activity.

And soon Eduard Spertsyan once again performed the serve from the same point. And again Kayo responded to her, literally ramming with his strong body the flimsy Ural barriers that arose in front of him. Now he kicked, but this time he barely hit the goal. However, the impression was still such that Ural, which was already lagging behind in the score, was about to be crushed: Krasnodar was too in a classy tone.

But a few minutes passed, and the mood of the audience changed radically. “Ural”, having received a hole, slowly adapted to the game, as it should have entered it. And it turned out that the Krasnodar pressure did not scare him so much – it was quite possible to break him. And also – that the guests are able to carry out not bad attacks.

One of them turned into an interesting transfer of the ball from the right flank to the left edge of the penalty area through a series of sensible passes, from where Andrey Yegorychev fired on the move. The shot was not exactly fatal. And goalkeeper Matvey Safonov guessed right with his trajectory. It remained only to hit the ball correctly – harder, somewhere to the side. Safonov beat him back softly and straight in front of him, on the leg of Eric Bikfalvi. “Ural”, which had just looked doomed to torment, equalized the score, and having equalized, it did not suffer at all.

However, he did not suffer exactly until the beginning of the second half, which Krasnodar opened with peppy attacks. At some point, it seemed that the Urals still fought back, that they waited for the calm, but the feeling turned out to be deceptive. The trouble came from the same place as in the first half.

Krasnodar earned another corner. Only now, instead of the usual delivery, he performed a rally – in appearance, it must be said, rather boring and monotonous. But it was boring until the moment when, having received the ball three dozen meters from the goal, Mihailo Banyats suddenly launched it into them with a neat “parachute”. “Parachutik” was a success almost perfectly. Practically – because the ball still did not fly into the net, but hit the post behind the back of the discouraged Baklov. But, in fact, there is no difference. Before the break, the rebound helped Ural, now it has been picked up by Krasnodar forward John Cordoba.

Krasnodar missed the opportunity to confidently finish off Ural in the end, when Leo Goglichidze knocked down Cordoba in the penalty area.

The violation was obvious, but VAR did not let the intrigue die, fixing an offside position in front of him. Nevertheless, this luck did not save the Yekaterinburg residents.

The Superfinal of the Russian Cup, in which the Krasnodar club will meet with CSKA, will be held on June 11 at Luzhniki. And this will be the second chance in the history of Krasnodar to get to the trophy. He missed the previous one in 2014, losing in the cup final on penalties to Rostov.

Alexey Dospekhov