Viktor Goncharenko did not remember the old – Sport – Kommersant

The football club Ural, which occupies the last place in the Russian Premier League after five rounds, announced the appointment of the Belarusian specialist Viktor Goncharenko as head coach. Previously, he headed the leading RPL teams – CSKA and Krasnodar, but he had already had a chance to work with Ural before. Moreover, then Goncharenko’s cooperation with the Yekaterinburg residents turned out to be fleeting, and two and a half months later he broke up with them under mysterious, actually scandalous circumstances.

One of the losers of the debut segment of the championship of Russia – “Ural” found himself, one might say, an old new coach, again inviting Viktor Goncharenko. For the first time, he headed the club from Yekaterinburg in the summer of 2015 – then a young (he was 38 years old) promising specialist was just starting his career in Russian football. Recallthat Goncharenko attracted the attention of his successful work with the provincial BATE Borisov, which three times led to the group stage of the Champions League, where he even beat Bayern once.

Once in Russia, the Belarusian specialist chose as a launch pad for Kuban, which at that time still played in the Premier League, but then fate led him already in the “Ural”.

Then the president of the Ekaterinburg club, Grigory Ivanov, signed a three-year contract with Goncharenko, but in the 2015/16 championship the team played only six rounds under his leadership, and before the home match with Terek Grozny (now Akhmat) he unexpectedly left her location. At the same time, Ural hid information about the situation with the head coach for several days. That story with the disappearance of Goncharenko caused a great and scandalous resonance. As they say, on the sidelines, his demarche was associated with unwillingness to participate in a “strange” match, and before that game with Terek there was talk that Ural should have “returned” points to Grozny, which they allegedly gave him at the end of the previous championship. Bookmakers gave suspicious odds on the outcome of this meeting, and some even refused to accept bets on it.

As a result, the Yekaterinburgers confirmed Goncharenko’s resignation, stating that they parted ways with him by mutual agreement due to a difference in views on the development of the club.

Meanwhile, neither Ivanov nor Goncharenko have commented on the seven-year-old incident. It is clear that both turned this page, deciding not to stir up the past. The president of Ural only joked about the reasons for that resignation, saying in an interview with the publication “Sport-Express”that “already old and does not remember anything.” A new contract with Goncharenko was signed for two years. Moreover, Grigory Ivanov stressed that he still considers him one of the best specialists in the country.

The last place of work of Viktor Goncharenko was Krasnodar, from which fired in January of this year. By the way, this resignation also looked somewhat strange, given that it happened during the break between the two parts of the championship, almost during the holidays. According to unofficial data, Goncharenko again had disagreements with the club’s management, now represented by the owner of Krasnodar, Sergei Galitsky. Yes, and the sports performance of the Kuban under him was average, if we take into account the rather high cost of their composition at that time.

In general, the former glory of Goncharenko somehow began to fade away, and this began when he was still heading CSKA. The once promising coach did not live up to expectations. If at first everything went well and the army team won silver medals with him twice in a row, then they stopped getting into the top three and were not at all pleased with the results in the international arena. Moreover, disappointment set in, and it all ended with the fact that in March 2021, without waiting for the end of the season, Goncharenko asked from CSKA to the exit. Even in his native Belarus, he was not given the prize of the best coach, which had previously been awarded five years in a row, and in total he has ten such titles.

And in Krasnodar, Goncharenko failed to restart his career. Now he, apparently, will try to do it in the Urals. True, you have to start from the bottom.

After five rounds of the championship, Yekaterinburgers are in last place. Four defeats in a row with a total score of 1:10 pushed club leadership to the decision to resign Igor Shalimov. Acting head coach Yevgeny Averyanov recently managed to score the first point thanks to a goalless draw against Premier League debutant Fakel. Well, in the next round, “Ural” is waiting for a super-principled match by today’s standards with “Paris Nizhny Novgorod”, which also started the championship unsuccessfully and takes 14th place with two points.

Alexander Ilyin