Kuban beach handball players won the Cup of Russia again

Everything is decided in shootouts

On July 1-2, Moscow hosted the Russian Beach Handball Cup among men’s and women’s teams. It turned out to be victorious for the women’s team of the Krasnodar Territory.

The composition of the participants was not very numerous: there were five teams. In addition, the Russian youth team played out of competition. So officially Kuban women competed with three metropolitan teams. One of them – the Moscow Handball Academy (MGA) – looked like an extremely dangerous opponent, as the leader of the Russian championship after the first round, which took place in Anapa.

The Krasnodar Territory was based on players from the Shcherbinovsky region. Last year, this team already won the Russian Cup, and now it has strengthened, acquired a regional status and arrived to defend the title.

At the first stage, the teams played each other in one round. The Kubanochki defeated their rivals Territoriya Sportu and Vorobyovy Gory confidently, with a score of 2:0 in sets. In the last match of the day, the southerners defeated the formidable MGA. Here it was necessary to resort to a shootout to determine the winner, as the rivals exchanged successes in sets. Kubans were stronger in free throws.

The Krasnodar Territory team suffered the only defeat from the Russian youth team in a shootout. It is interesting that Andrei Garkavy, the head coach of the Kuban girls, is also part of the coaching staff of the national team, assisting Anna Sidoricheva. In this game, he was completely focused on the game of the Krasnodar Territory national team, and in other matches of the youth team he was with her.

On the second day, the Kuban women in the semi-finals won a confident victory over Territory of Sport – 2: 0. In the final, the southerners predictably met with the MGA. If there was often a lack of stubborn struggle in cup games, then the decisive match did not let us down! In a fierce battle, the Kubans won the first set – only thanks to the golden ball thrown in stoppage time. In the second installment, the southerners lost, so the fate of the trophy was decided by the shootouts. Krasnodar proved that it was no coincidence that they won in free throws for the first time. All of their five attempts were accurate, while the opponents missed.

The most valuable player of the tournament was recognized as one of the leaders of the Krasnodar Territory team – Anna Kondratenko, who, by the way, plays in classic handball for Kuban. Galina Trubetskaya, also one of the winners, became the best goalkeeper.

Ahead of the team on July 14-16 is the second round of the Russian championship, which will be held in Stavropol. The team of the Krasnodar Territory in the standings shares the third – fifth places, lagging behind the MGA and Stavropol. The team is focused on winning medals. Performance at the Cup of Russia should additionally give confidence and, of course, teamwork.

In the men’s part of the competition, the traditional leader of the Kuban beach handball, Krasnodar “Ekaterinodar”, as well as the team of the Pavlovsk region, performed.

The composition of the finalists for men was easy to predict: in the duel for the trophy, as for several years in a row, Krasnodar met with their eternal rivals from the Belgorod club Tekhnolog-Spartak, which is the current owner of the Russian Cup and the national champion. Success again accompanied the Belgorod team, who defended their title. As with the women’s teams, in the final everything was decided in a shootout, and here luck was already on the side of the Kuban rivals.

The Pavlovsky district held a worthy tournament and finished it in fifth place, having beaten “Youth of Moscow” in the butt game. Yekaterinodar player Evgeniy Svestula was recognized as the best defender of the competition.

The second round of the championship, we recall, was moved from Belgorod. Anapa has been appointed as the new venue, where the competitions will be held on July 13-16. Ekaterinodar will have a new attempt to push the Belgorod team, in the first round they took second place.

Failures of the “tigers”

The Russian beach soccer championship will also continue. From June 30 to July 2, Krasnodar-YUMR played regular matches in St. Petersburg. They were formed according to the result, unfortunately, unsuccessfully. The Tigers were unable to break the losing streak.

Nevertheless, the fights turned out to be quite combative. In the first of them, the southerners lost to the Wings of the Soviets from Samara – 3: 6. Having conceded first, the Tigers took the lead thanks to the efforts of the Brazilian Felipinho and Artem Morozov. According to the results of two halves (three twelve-minute halves are played in beach soccer), the Samartans regained their lead – 4 : 2. In the final segment, at the thirtieth minute, another Krasnodar player, the Brazilian Guguinho, reduced the gap to a minimum. Alas, this was the Tigers’ last scoring effort. In the end, the Volga players scored twice more.

Then the team from Krasnodar failed to cope with the vice-champion of the country — Lokomotiv Moscow — 4 : 9. The favorites hit the Krasnodar gate five times in just six starting minutes. “Soaked” the score, who could have guessed, the goalkeeper of “Krasnodar-YUMR” Maxim Marchenko! However, for beach soccer, goals scored by goalkeepers are far from uncommon. After that Muscovites distinguished themselves three times. Then Marchenko upset his counterpart again, making the score 2 : 8! By the way, at that moment, the Lokomotiv gate was occupied by the most famous beach football player from the Krasnodar Territory – world champion Stanislav Kosharny. On the wave of success, the Tigers scored twice more on the titled countryman – this was done by Alexander Revenko and Alexander Solovkin. Muscovites were the last to distinguish themselves.

The most intense was the final match against Saratov. Opponents started rapidly. In the first minute, the Saratov team opened the scoring from a penalty. Krasnodar quickly restored equality after Anton Akulich’s goal. During the sixth minute Saratov Brazilian Paulinho scored twice. And the “tigers” for a long time were in the role of catching up. In the second half, Akulich scored his second goal, Artem Morozov’s double allowed the score to be equalized – 4: 4. In the last half, the Saratov team snatched the victory thanks to Paulinho, who scored a hat-trick – 5: 4.

In the next round on July 14-16 Krasnodar will play three fights in Moscow. The rivals will be CSKA Moscow, LEX from St. Petersburg and Saratov. After ten games, the Tigers have one win and four points, and the team is in last, ninth place.

In memory of the masters

Let’s return to handball, more precisely to its classical variation. The Krasnodar SKIF came out of vacation. Following the results of the club meeting, Savely Shalabanov, the top scorer of the Super League last season, was appointed as the new captain of the team. Sergey Nikolaenkov, who returned to his native club from CSKA, became vice-captain.

The name of the new head coach has also been announced. Dmitry Karlov left his post earlier. The choice of a new mentor was, frankly, unexpected. SKIF General Director Stepan Sidorchuk will also try on the position of head coach.

“The combination of such positions is a fairly common practice,” the club press service quotes him as saying. – There are examples of Alexander Ivanovich Tarasikov, Valentin Mikhailovich Shiyan, Oleg Valerievich Khodkov. The minimum task for next season is to get into the top eight. The goal in each game is to show your maximum and play to win.

The solution is rather unusual. Stepan Sidorchuk mostly worked with youth teams, as well as Russian and Iranian national teams of different ages. For the first time he will be a mentor of such a serious club. At the same time, Oleg Khodkov’s combination of key positions in the club turned out to be very successful: SKIF achieved its last big successes in the 2016/17 season, the team won the Russian Cup by winning the trophy in the home Final Four, and after that became the owner of bronze medals championship. The second season, however, was less successful. In the last championship of Russia, the Krasnodar specialist, being already a mentor of CSKA, led his team to gold medals.

July 2nd is International Sports Journalist Day. On the eve of the holiday, it became known that a street in Krasnodar would be named after the most legendary, in my opinion, sports journalist of the Krasnodar Territory. We are talking about Viktor Timofeevich Anfinogenov. Handball was his profile sport, the master wrote about Kuban and SKIF. However, all sports were subject to him. He passed away in 2021 after a long illness.

This initiative was made by the Krasnodar Interdepartmental Toponymic Commission, as reported by the press service of the “Kuban”.

The former general director of the Kuban Group of Companies, and now a member of the Public Chamber of Krasnodar Sergey Walter noted that the commission recommended that the City Duma of Krasnodar name one of the streets of the new microdistrict in the area of ​​​​the village of Elizavetinskaya after Viktor Anfinogenov.

In addition, at the same meeting, it was decided to assign the name of one of the patriarchs of the Kuban men’s handball – Valentin Shiyan, who died a year ago, to the city children’s and youth sports school in Krasnodar. Under his leadership, SKIF became the champion of the USSR and the CIS, won the IHF Cup. Eternal memory to masters…