“Sochi” as replaced – Newspaper Kommersant No. 38 (7483) dated 03/06/2023

In the first official match of the Russian Championship, under the leadership of Kurban Berdyev, appointed as its head coach in the winter, Sochi, which was at the bottom of the standings before the restart of the championship, beat – 2: 0 – at home one of the contenders for the CSKA awards, not allowing him to get close to the top three . But Dynamo came close to it, which on the final day of the 18th, the first after the winter break, finished the round in the end at home – 1:0 – Krylya Sovetov.

In the Sochi match, it was terribly interesting to watch the mentor of the hosts, Kurban Berdyev. The master, who returned in the winter to the domestic football elite, looked at the field with such a stern look that someone who does not remember the style of this coach could have the feeling that what was happening on him causes him nothing but pain, which, nevertheless, must be endured . Meanwhile, Sochi was not so bad, at least if we talk about the density of the game. Previously, before Berdyev, pliable as a piece of melted butter, now he sensibly spoiled the army game. And this is CSKA in the first half of the match, in general terribly boring, walked along the edge of the cliff.

The end of the half turned out to be entertaining – and only thanks to Sochi’s attacks. Once CSKA was saved by referee Vladislav Bezborodov. Being in front of his own goal and trying to get ahead of Vladislav Sarveli in the fight for the ball, army defender Willian Rocha, who heartily swung his leg, did not hit the ball, but hit the thigh of the Sochi resident, whose suffering that lasted a couple of minutes after such a surprise did not look too theatrical . Bezborodov, however, having studied the video replay, CSKA spared. And then, almost from the goalkeeper’s line, another Sochi footballer Sergei Terekhov corrected the ball. In this episode, the trouble from the guests was taken away by the phenomenal reaction of goalkeeper Igor Akinfeev, which has not disappeared over the years.

Payback for missed opportunities almost overtook Sochi in the middle of the second half. After the set piece, Moises played excellently on rebounds, managed to properly celebrate his luck, but only to find out in half a minute that he failed to put CSKA ahead due to a barely noticeable “outside the game”.

And then, miraculously, the surviving residents of Sochi composed an extremely nice attack. Towards the end of it, Artur Yusupov cut out a thin – on horseback, but insanely soft, neatly flying around all the defenders – a pass to Luka Djordjevic, who correctly adjusted to him and drove the ball into the net. And soon Sochi’s flank attack resulted in a series of ricochets. As a result, the ball again went to Djordjevic, who again did not miss. And in this explosion that killed CSKA, it was impossible not to see the hand of the new Sochi coach. Both Djordjevic and Nikita Burmistrov, who participated in both scoring combinations, were players who had just come on as a substitute.

CSKA, thus, failed to use Saturday’s breakdowns of the components, together with the undisputed leader of Zenit, the top three of the club championship – Spartak, which broke the world with Ural, and Rostov, which lost to Lokomotiv with a raging hat-trick author Artem Dziuba, and stayed away from the “medal zone”. But they were used by another metropolitan team.

Dynamo played a very difficult match in this round against a team with which, after the resumption of the season, they crossed paths for the third time in a row. Two previous clashes happened in the quarterfinal stage of the RPL Way of the Fonbet Cup of Russia and turned in favor of the Wings of the Soviets. “Wings” and in the collision already within the framework of the championship gave reason to think that they were ready to annoy the Dynamo again. Those, for at least half of the first half, looked like they had just arrived from a long and lazy beach vacation, during which the ball was not touched: timidity, unjustified rollbacks by the whole squad, losses. In this stretch of frank Dynamo weakness, the guests were good and twice struck the wrong gate. But both goals were annulled by VAR: in the first case – due to an obvious offside, in the second – due to a rather non-obvious handball from Benjamin Garre.

In the second half, the cruelty of modern video technologies was felt by Dynamo, who came to his senses and played well, with a spark. And it lost at first glance a completely honest goal: a foul by Roberto Fernandez, who put his hand on the opponent’s back, could in fact be seen only on the monitor screen.

The division of points in this match was already close, but still did not happen. The stoppage time came when the Dynamo team squeezed the Wings in their penalty area, and with their discounts, the seemingly not too dangerous canopy was converted into a terrible threat by Mumi Ngamalyo and Dmitry Skopintsev. She appeared as a deadly threat when it turned out that for some reason there was no one next to Konstantin Tyukavin, whom Skopintsev had passed, although half a dozen meters to the gate. So Dynamo got close to Rostov, which closed the top three, almost close, at a distance of three points.

The match between Krasnodar and Torpedo attracted attention for three reasons. The first was the stadium that seemed outwardly not even half empty, but absolutely empty, the stadium of the hosts, who had long earned a reputation as a team that had no problems with attendance, including in matches with unsightly rivals: RB Sport counted about 7,000 people in the stands of 35,000 people. Human. And this picture made me remember for the hundredth time during the season that since the spring part of it, the Fan ID system has been used in all arenas of the Russian Premier League (RPL).

The second reason was the game “Torpedo”. The outsider, meeting with a club with ambitions, scratched out the seventh point in the championship, getting a draw – 2: 2 – thanks not only to the unluckyness of his opponents (Krasnodar did not realize a bunch of correct chances, and once their goal was canceled by VAR, which fixed a handball from Moses Cobnan) but also to his own stubbornness. It was overflowing from the torpedoes.

Finally, reason number three is the goal with which Torpedo pulled out its precious point in the end, given its overall performance. He was on the account of Igor Lebedenko, who entered the field in the second half, who opened his professional career – in the same club – at the dawn of the century. Lebedenko scored against Krasnodar at the age of 39 years and 282 days. And older than the author of the goal in the history of the RPL was not. The former record holder, Saturn forward Sergei Natalushko, sent the ball into the Lokomotiv goal in 2000, being a month and a little younger.

Alexey Dospekhov