The second part of the Russian football championship opens with the match between Rostov and Krylya Sovetov.

The second part of the Russian football championship, which opens today with the match between Rostov and Krylya Sovetov, is intriguing for a number of reasons. The main one is related to the fight for gold and other awards. The flagship of domestic football, Zenit, is two points behind Krasnodar, which is in first place, and several clubs are sitting in ambush behind the leaders, some of which have already proven that they know how to prepare well for the spring period.

This season, the winter break in domestic football did not last as long as it happened in previous times—a little more than two and a half months. But this is still quite a long time to have time to forget the details regarding the standings. And before the restart of the championship, in which a dozen rounds remain to be played, they must be remembered. They promise quite an exciting attraction.

We are talking, first of all, about the density of the tournament table, which, contrary to the Russian football tradition of transparently hinting at key results in advance, is high in all niches and only hints at an inevitable tough fight within them. At the bottom, for example, there are no such obvious outsiders as Torpedo and Khimki were a year ago. Sochi, which is in 16th place, is separated by only four points from Orenburg, which is in 14th place. Baltika, which together with the Sochi team is in the relegation zone, is only two behind the Orenburg team. At the same time, “Rostov”, which closes the top ten, can hardly relax, since “Akhmat”, which is in 13th place, that is, located in the “zone of transition matches”, is next to each other, four points away. And you can fall into it by failing just a couple of rounds. At the same time, none of the clubs that found themselves in the basement after the autumn period, strictly speaking, based on the game, looked doomed to remain there. The flashes gave everything away. And Sochi, for the rescue operation, managed to acquire a coach with a resounding biography – Robert Moreno, whose track record even includes work with the Spanish national team.

But the most delicious intrigue, of course, is concentrated in the upper niche. Everything there is terribly interesting.

Marching to the gold of the five previous championships, Zenit got used to creating a margin of safety in the fall – at least modest, but allowing one to feel more or less comfortable, giving the right to make mistakes. He enters the spring of 2024 without this right, in the rank of catching up. And we need to catch up with Krasnodar, which is two points ahead and which before the pause looked not like an upstart that accidentally found itself near a giant, but a team that, thanks to the training and talent of its performers, is actually capable of causing a lot of problems for the giant.

For those who are not indifferent to the Krasnodar team, while waiting for the continuation of the race against the football monster, some nuances should have warmed their souls a little. For example, statistics that insist that leadership achieved by winter is an important fact. 11 national championships were held according to the “autumn-spring” system. At ten, the team that left for the New Year holidays on the top line finished there. And only ten years ago, Zenit broke the trend with CSKA, which surpassed it in 2014. Well, or here’s an observation. Zenit has six more home matches on the championship calendar, while Krasnodar has seven. What a plus, especially considering that among them is the meeting in which they host St. Petersburg on April 13, that is, perhaps the key one in the championship, all other things being equal.

Those who want Zenit’s sixth title in a row can savor the results of the transfer campaign. Within its framework, the clubs of the Russian Premier League showed surprising generosity for themselves in the era of international isolation, investing almost €70 million in newcomers, and a significant part of this amount came from Zenit purchases. Having suffered because of the agreement on Danil Krugovoi’s departure to CSKA in the summer and banished him to the second team, the St. Petersburgers lured Ilzat Akhmetov from their Krasnodar competitors and brought a new batch of interesting Brazilians from the opposite shore of the Atlantic: Nina, Pedro and Arthur. The depth of Zenit’s bid, which is of enormous importance in the finishing squares, has become even greater. And Arthur, judging by the test matches, seems to be able to join the team right now.

Krasnodar behaved more quietly on the market. Although both defensive midfielder Kevin Castaño and winger Victor Sa seem to be good candidates for a team whose core areas were packed, not to the brim, with acquisitions.

At the same time, it cannot be said that the tandem went far, far ahead of its pursuers. Four points behind Zenit are the extremely convincing Dynamo. And a whole line lined up right behind the Dynamo players. Lokomotiv has one point behind them, Spartak has two points, Krylya Sovetov has three, Rubin and CSKA have four. The math suggests that all of these clubs can be considered full-fledged bounty hunters. A gorgeous picture, which is slightly decorated with some nuances.

For example, Spartak fans are probably concerned about the events that have turned it over the past couple of months into the undisputed headliner of the football information space: the conflict between coach Guillermo Abascal and Georgiy Dzhikia that spilled into the public sphere, the appointment of the young Benfica scout Tomas Amaral as sporting director, the recognition of the Russian Premier league, the state of the Lukoil Arena lawn is unsuitable for the next games and, finally, naturally, the situation with Quincy Promes seems to have escalated to the point of redistribution in a matter of hours before the restart. According to a number of media resources, on Thursday evening the most dangerous Spartak forward, who was previously convicted in his homeland in the Netherlands for drug smuggling and assault on a cousin for a total term of seven and a half years, was detained before flying from Dubai to Russia by the UAE police, where the Moscow the club held a meeting. And these events are accompanied by the good tone of the team in friendly matches, the exceptional performance in them of the same Promes, as if spurred on by the verdict and began scoring stacks of goals against Kairat and Astana in friendly matches, as well as the expensive and promising purchase of another notable striker from Dutch championship Manfred Ugalde, in theory adding variety and gloss to the front line. Well, all this against the backdrop of the hope that Abaskal and his staff have learned by heart last year’s bitter lesson. In the spring of 2023, Spartak, vigorous in the fall, suffered a disaster, winning only four out of 13 matches. As a result, the fight for gold with Zenit, with whom the Muscovites meet away next Saturday in the central match of the 19th round, which at some point seemed like a not-so-fantastic scenario, did not take place, and the Spartak team got bronze.

They were ahead of them precisely due to an impressive stylistic upgrade during the winter break, again the slightly behind army team, who are unlikely to give up the idea of ​​pulling off the same spectacular trick, since coach Vladimir Fedotov has famously mastered the technologies of post-New Year reboot and preparation. But among the pursuers of Krasnodar and Zenit, there is a team that performed the spring spurt in the last championship even better than CSKA. Lokomotiv did not win only three times in the second part, suffering the only defeat – from Zenit. And the rise of the club, which recently acquired interesting newcomers with experience in the “big” leagues – Gerzino Nyamsi and Said Hamulich, forces us to monitor it more closely. Moreover, if in the first half of 2023 the railway workers, in fact, were getting out of a fairly deep crisis, having just lured away coach Mikhail Galaktionov, who became a godsend, from Nizhny Novgorod, now they are resuming their performances in the championship on what seems to be a very strong foundation.

Alexey Dospehov