The leaders kept their distance

The next – 23rd – round of the Russian Championship crowned the match of its leaders, in which Rostov played a draw at home – 0:0 – with Zenit, not much inferior to him either in activity, or in the quantity and quality of chances created. This result has kept Zenit confident leadership in the championship, and left their opponents lagging behind by nine points in second position.

“Rostov” in this match kicked out a wedge with a wedge – from the point of view of philosophy, they played not from the opponent, not from his strength and capabilities, but as if he was opposed not by Zenit, but by some ordinary middle peasant in the Premier League, with whom the main thing – do not let go of the reins. The picture was quite rare for meetings involving the leader. His opponent fought both for the ball and for the territory with such diligence that sometimes, in order to prevent the Zenit team from moving away from his penalty area normally, through a simple and accurate pass, he sent center forward Nikolai Komlichenko to interfere with goalkeeper Mikhail Kerzhakov. The left flank – with the active Alexander Silyanov – the Rostovites owned segments in the first half.

To this diligence, Rostov, of course, would do well to add a pinch of a truly high class at that stage of attacks, when they had already crept close to someone else’s penalty area. But she, this pinch, this couple of extraordinary decisions, was often not enough for him in the course of this season. So all the sharpness created by the Rostovites before the break was reduced to a long-range strike by Komlichenko. It was not the performance that made him sharp, but the forward’s partner Khoren Bayramyan, who turned up on the trajectory. The rebound was extremely unpleasant for Kerzhakov, but, fortunately for him, the ball dived past the post.

However, Rostov achievements in the first half were obvious. Well, let’s say, an achievement is the fact that before the break, the central character of Zenit in all three moments he created, more or less similar to scoring, was the extreme right-back Vyacheslav Karavaev. First, he unexpectedly moved to the center under the serve of Douglas Santos and closed it with his head: the ball went out of bounds, hitting the crossbar. Then Karavaev reacted to Malcolm’s subtle pass and shot so that Claudinho, in order to score, had only to put his foot on the goalkeeper’s line: the Brazilian did not hit the ball. Finally, one day Vyacheslav Karavaev, having again moved from the touchline to the penalty area and having time for another transfer from the opposite flank, tried to shoot on the move: it turned out unsuccessfully.

But the most dangerous Zenit players – Claudinho, Malcolm, Andrey Mostovoy, Wendel – were “silent”, having gone headlong into the rough work. And they had a lot of it, because with vigor, a desire to prove that he can play like a favorite on his field against the flagship, Rostov was in perfect order.

And so boring football became even more fun after the break – thanks primarily to Zenit, who nevertheless worked on the mistakes. He added, and the sharpness began to give birth to those who should be responsible for it. Mateo Cassierra hit his head very well: goalkeeper Sergei Pesyakov stopped the ball with a spectacular jump. Wendel fired from a lethal position, from a dozen meters, seeing in front of him field players who were insuring the goalkeeper, probably no longer hoping for the best. But they were lucky – the Brazilian launched the ball in the wrong direction.

And the impulse of “Zenith” made life easier for “Rostov”, so in need of free zones. Kirill Shchetinin burst into one of them after the transfer of Bayramyan. Douglas Santos cut him down so frankly that referee Sergey Karasev could not doubt that there was a foul. There were only doubts about where the foul happened – before the penalty area or inside it, where Shchetinin’s somersault broke off with a hard landing. VAR “Zenith” regretted, and Karasev did not appoint a penalty. However, the “regular” standard was fraught with a grandiose threat, because the ball beaten off by Kerzhakov stuck at the far post in the Rostov player Maxim Osipenko. He could well have jumped away from him into the corner, but he preferred to slip near the gate.

And Zenit responded to this with a chic combination in its brevity, with an impeccable diagonal from Claudinho to Malcolm. A whole half of the gate was wide open in front of the forward – you just need not to miss. Malcolm just missed.

And then the game slowly calmed down, as it happens by the 12th round, the boxers who had just desperately thrashed each other, but did not achieve a knockout, calm down: the forces are not unlimited. And a point is also an acquisition. For Zenit, seven rounds before the finish of the championship, it retained a confident lead in the championship, nine points behind Rostov. Rostovites left on the second line in the table. True, the gap from Spartak is now completely symbolic – that very point.

Alexey Dospekhov