Sergey Yuran will pull Nizhny up – Newspaper Kommersant No. 58 (7503) dated 04/05/2023

In the football club “Paris Nizhny Novgorod” there was a personnel reshuffle. Sergei Yuran became the head coach instead of Artem Gorlov, whose contract was terminated by agreement of the parties. After the resumption of the championship of Russia, Nizhny Novgorod lost all four matches, and now the new coach will have to rectify the situation. Now the team is in 13th place, in the play-off zone for a ticket to the Premier League next season.

Changes in Nizhny Novgorod were brewing, because the risky invitation to the post of head coach of a young, 35-year-old specialist Artem Gorlov, as practice showed, was a mistake of the club’s management. The affairs of the debutant of the Premier League clearly did not work out, and the team under his leadership almost immediately went into a steep dive. The Nizhny Novgorod team beat Zvezda from the second league in the Russian Cup, but then a series of defeats followed. Large “flew” “Zenith”, twice in a row conceded “Rostov” – first in the championship, and then in the Cup – and dropped out of the tournament. They even managed to get the so-called techie in the national championship match with Torpedo, which ended in a draw. Due to the fact that Nizhny had a disqualified footballer on the field at that time, the score 1:1, according to the rules of the competition, turned into 0:3.

In the 21st round, Gorlov was actually finished off by the former head coach of the Volga club, Mikhail Galaktionov, whose Lokomotiv simply smashed all the opponent’s tactical formations and preparations. As a result, the defeat of 0:4 and resignation.

Moreover, it was not possible to understand why the general director of Nizhny Novgorod, Ravil Izmailov, made a bet on Gorlov and called him a promising mentor with modern views on football.

Not only the results, but also the performance of the team was by no means pleasing to the eye, although Gorlov had more than two months of winter training to implement his ideas.

True, Nizhny sank uncritically in the standings. Before the restart of the championship, he was 12th, and now he is 13th with the same 19 points. And there is still a margin of safety in front of clubs that are in the zone of direct relegation from the Premier League. Torpedo is nine points ahead of Nizhny Novgorod, and Khimki is six points ahead. Except that Fakel, which is in 14th place, reduced the gap to two points. At the same time, Krylya Sovetov, which is already in a safe 12th position, scored only two points more. And it is obvious that Samarans are Nizhny Novgorod’s main competitors in the rest of the season.

Nevertheless Sergey Yuran took command in a difficult situation, when he has no time to think about what kind of football she will play, but it is necessary to solve a specific task – to maintain a residence permit in the Premier League and avoid play-offs with representatives of the first division.

However, Yuran has already been in serious alterations and is quite suitable for the role of a rescuer. So, last season he already saved Khimki from relegation. Having headed the club near Moscow before the spring segment of the championship, when he occupied the last, 16th line in the table, Yuran brought him to the final 13th place. Although Khimki started under him with two defeats and after 20 rounds they had a miserable 14 points, but they pulled through and finished with 32 points.

Yes, Yuran’s team then had to participate in the joints, and it was alarming there when they lost the first match to SKA-Khabarovsk. But Khimki’s houses proved their superiority and remained in the elite. And in the current championship, they started off briskly under the leadership of Yuran, sharing points with Zenit and defeating the same Nizhny Novgorod with Torpedo. In four rounds, the red-blacks took seven points, but then there was an inexplicable resignation of Juran, and they abruptly rolled down the inclined plane, so much so that they still cannot stop, having fired the third head coach in an incomplete season. Well, Yuran will now pull out Nizhny Novgorod and, perhaps, will finally find his own club, in which he will be able to truly realize himself.

Alexander Ilyin