You can't win under pressure

ZhVK Dynamo (Krasnodar) played a quarter of the preliminary stage of the Russian Championship. PFC Kuban (Krasnodar) and FC Chernomorets (Novorossiysk) are the first candidates for relegation from the first league. “MK in Kuban” is about the main sporting events in the Krasnodar region.

Lost to those who haven't won yet

Dynamo, having been eliminated from the Russian Cup, continues to compete in the national championship. After a series of three home games - in the Russian Cup and Championship - Pavel Zabuslaev's team went to Kursk to fight with the absolute debutant of the Super League - Atom. Before this meeting, the game took place in the third round - the hosts did not win the Russian Championship, and they failed to achieve this with Dynamo.

Krasnodar, when the situation became critical, stepped up their game and forced their opponents to make mistakes. In the first game, out of seventeen rallies, Dynamo won thirteen. The opponent was worried. Atom was unable to play under pressure. As a result, the game ended with a score of 12:25 in favor of Zabuslaev’s team.

In the second set, “Atom” was in the lead: 17: 14, 18: 17. Then “Dynamo” gained points in series. Krasnodar captain Yulia Podskalnaya scored three times from the edge of the net and stopped two attacks from her opponents. “Atom” stopped scoring under such pressure. As a result: 21:25 and the segment of the game won with a score of 11:4.

In the third game, the hosts became leaders, having a four-point handicap after the attacks of Alexandra Berezkina, Victoria Ivanova, and Maria Evteeva’s ace - 20:16. All that the opponent was able to create later were two goals, which he took thanks to Dynamo’s mistakes. At the net, everything was decided by the block. The Krasnodar team earned five points in a row. Rimma Goncharova won four goals while blocking for the team. It was she who put an end to the game - 22:25.

Immediately after the victory in Kursk, Dynamo went to the capital of Belarus to fight with the local Minchanka. Zabuslaev approached this game with personnel losses: Alisa Glushchenko, after an injury and rehabilitation, had to regain the skills and physical fitness necessary for the game, working with the youth team. Svetlana Masaleva and Valeria Shevchuk were out for at least two months due to injuries. Thanks to this, libero Anastasia Zhuldikova played her first match in the main team of the club in Minsk. The Dynamo club played the match using all the announced players.

The Krasnodar team won the first set with some difficulty, but lost the second set by eight points. The third game also went to Minchanka. In the fourth, Dynamo took the lead with a score of 3:0 after a successful attack by Maria Bogovskaya and two misses by the opposing striker Valeria Turchina. She sent the ball into touch twice. Dynamo then only increased this head start. Yulia Podskalnaya and Bogovskaya scored points in key rallies - the Krasnodar volleyball graduate arrived in Minsk not quite healthy, but played well.

In the tiebreaker, Goncharova opened the scoring. She scored herself and made an ace - 0:2. Then Anastasia Zhukova performed a solo. She implemented four attacks (2:3, 6:9, 7:12, 9:14). Three more successful Dynamo attacks in the game were scored by Bogovskaya (6:10), Maria Vorobyova (4:6) and Yulia Podskalnaya (8:13). Dynamo never made a mistake, and the opponent gave away five plays. As a result, the victory was 2:3 (23:25, 25:17, 25:22, 19:25, 9:15).

In the fifth round of the Russian Championship, Krasnodar hosted Zarechye-Odintsovo at home. The hosts lost the first game, but then they pulled themselves together and never let go of success. Dynamo had a hero in each of the games they won. In the second set, Elena Tkacheva earned six points in attack - 2: 1, 5: 2, 13: 13, 14: 13, 19: 18, 24: 21. With a score of 15: 21 in the first game, she replaced Zhukova, eventually becoming the most productive player of the match. In the third game, Vorobyova had a great series of serves. She allowed Dynamo to win six goals in a row - 15: 7. Vorobyova’s attack removed all questions about who would become the leader in the match.

The decisive event for the fourth game was when Alina Podskalnaya came up to serve as part of a double substitution. So the score 7:6 turned into 13:6. The opponent did not give up. When this became critically important, Goncharova, attacking, simply hit the ball into the floor - 19: 16. Odintsovo immediately made two mistakes while playing in defense - 21: 16. As a result, Dynamo achieved another victory - 3: 1 ( 19: 25, 25: 22, 25: 17, 25: 18).

In the sixth round, the Krasnodar team played in Nizhny Novgorod against Sparta. Before this meeting, Dynamo’s opponents had not managed to win the Super League for the 2023/24 season. “Sparta” took the first two sets. Then Dynamo rallied and won the next two games. As a result, Zabuslaev’s team had to play a tiebreaker for the seventh time this season.

After an ace from Sparta captain Alesya Pirogovskaya, the hosts led with a score of 3:0. Bogovskaya’s serve, two attacks by Yulia Podskalnaya and her scoring block - and now the leader was changing in the game - 3:4. It was not possible to develop success. After Tkacheva’s attack, Dynamo led 5:6, but then the score became equal, 7:7. Then the hosts took the lead. Alina Shikalova, a student of Nizhny Novgorod volleyball, won six goals against Sparta with an attack in a shortened game. An ace from setter Veronika Arkhipova made the Volzhanki's advantage serious - 11: 8. Then Shikalova scored everything they gave her - 12: 9, 13: 10, 15: 12. As a result, the victory of the Nizhny Novgorod team - 3: 2 (25: 22, 25 : 21, 15: 25, 20: 25, 15: 12).

In the seventh round, Dynamo hosted Uralochka-NTMK at home. At first, Dynamo was in the lead - 2:0, but a series of serves by Elizaveta Kotova changed the course of the game - 2:4 and 5:9. Zabuslaev's staff went for a direct replacement of the setter, but Uralochka achieved a six-goal head start - 16:19. Dynamo returned to the game after Ekaterina Sinitsina returned to the court. Two connecting aces and it was 20:21. Then Vidineeva, after a quick attack by Olga Vaganova, failed to lift the ball in defense. Goncharova, attacking, shot into touch - 20:23. The Krasnodar team failed to score any more points in this set.

In the second game, on the serve of their setter Anastasia Kornienko, the guests won five goals - 9:14. Dynamo changed players during this period, but in vain. When attacking, the home team invariably ran into a perfectly organized opponent's block. Twice “Uralochka” stopped Vorobyova, once again Bogovskaya and forced Tkacheva to search in vain for the blockers’ fingers.

In the third set, the opponents, taking risks on serve, pushed Dynamo’s attack away from the net, while they themselves scored. “Dynamo” regained hope by adjusting their defensive game and starting to score points with a block - 18:21. The guests did not flinch, taking the game and the match after Nikolai Karpol’s time-out, - 0:3 (20:25, 17:25, 20:25). It is noteworthy that for Uralochka-NTMK the victory over Dynamo was the first in the championship of the 2023/24 season.

Following the results of seven rounds of the Super League, the Krasnodar team settled in sixth place in the standings with twelve points (four wins and three losses). It is still difficult to imagine what will make Dynamo show an order of magnitude higher results.

The main ones for departure

Things got worse for the Kuban football club in November. Vadim Evseev, who took control of the team in mid-September, has not yet been able to improve the game of the “yellow-greens”. Under his leadership, Kuban played ten matches. Of these, only three were won: against Rodina, Torpedo and Leningradets. The team from Krasnodar drew three times, and twice saved themselves from defeat (Tyumen and Chernomorets), once missing out on victory in the last minutes (SKA-Khabarovsk). The team lost four times (Akron, SKA-Khabarovsk, Arsenal and Tyumen). With such a game, after nineteen rounds, the “yellow-greens” scored seventeen points and dropped to the last, eighteenth place. So far the situation does not look so hopeless. A couple of victories are enough to have a chance to climb out of the relegation zone. Kuban will play its only remaining game this year in Saratov against Sokol, which is also in the relegation zone. “Kuban” is the main contender for relegation. Evseev’s team doesn’t concede the most goals (25 goals - the fourth best in the league), but they score the least (14 goals - the same number as Neftekhimik scored).

Another club from the Krasnodar region, Chernomorets, left not far from the “yellow-greens”. Konstantin Zyryanov's team has suffered a series of failures in recent matches and cannot win six matches in a row. Based on the results of nineteen meetings, the Novorossiysk team with eighteen points occupy the penultimate, seventeenth place. “Chernomorets” is the second candidate for relegation from the first league. But if both teams are downgraded, it is not a fact that the second strongest division will be left without representatives of clubs from the Krasnodar Territory, because at the end of this season, Sochi, which is in last place in the Premier League, may well return to the first league.