Zenit and CSKA claim the record eighth Russian Super Cup

The next football season starts in Russia, and according to tradition, it will open with a match for the Super Cup, which will be held on Saturday at Kazan’s Ak Bars Arena. This time the trophy will be played by Zenit and CSKA, which became the champion and the owner of the Cup of the country last season, respectively. The favorite is the club from St. Petersburg, which has clearly dominated Russian football in recent years, but both teams are now experiencing certain difficulties.

The current match for the Russian Super Cup will be the 21st in a row, and it is interesting that clubs that currently share the lead in terms of the number of trophies (seven each) will meet in it. So in Kazan, either Zenit or CSKA will take the lead. As part of the Super Bowl, this is their fourth confrontation. So far, the Petersburgers are winning 2:1, and the previous meeting of the teams took place in 2016. Let’s add that Zenit recently “privatized” not only the championship of Russia, in which it has not given the palm to anyone for five seasons, but also the Super Cup, having won three victories in a row.

Now the national champion is also a favorite. However, it cannot be said that everything is going smoothly for the Petersburgers and there are no problems. So far, the main one is Wendel’s demarche, who suddenly balked and wanted to leave Zenit. The Brazilian, however, has not yet found a new club for himself, but he has not yet arrived at the pre-season training camp. In the near future, he should still return, but it’s not a fact that in St. Petersburg they will now pretend that nothing happened. Information has already appeared that the management of Zenit will try to get rid of the “rebel” and at least send him on loan. Meanwhile, the loss of Wendel at the same time as the departure of Daler Kuzyaev, who signed a contract with Le Havre, will certainly weaken the middle line of Sergei Semak’s team.

In addition, the transfer process of defender Mario Fernandez has been delayed. In general, his appearance in the match for the Super Bowl was not planned, but in general, many questions remain about the transfer of the former army team, who, after the termination of the contract with CSKA, did not play for almost a year.

Claudinho’s participation in the Super Cup, who recently suffered an injury in the pre-season tournament, was in question. Nothing serious happened, but, apparently, another very important Brazilian for Zenit will at best come on as a substitute. Much more worrying for the Petersburgers is that Claudinho is courted by foreign clubs – in particular, the Brazilian Flamengo, which seems to be determined to negotiate his purchase to the bitter end. Yes, and the best scorer of the last Russian championship, Malcolm, is in demand on the transfer market, so one should not exclude his sale already in the summer period of additional applications.

Even the head coach of Zenit called the current situation difficult and unstable. “Someone, of course, can leave,” Sergei Semak said at a press conference before the Super Bowl. “It will be possible to finally put an end to it when the transfer window closes. Now we have a difficult period when we have to rebuild during the season.

Additional difficulties for Zenit are created by the injury of the central defender Rodrigao, and the current state of individual players, for example, striker Mateo Cassierra, who still somehow does not fit into the St. Petersburg ensemble.

True, unlike CSKA, Zenit had good sparring in the preseason – with Fenerbahce and Red Star. The army team limited themselves to a meeting with Neftekhimik and participation in the so-called Fraternal Cup, which consisted of two matches with Dynamo, which had an experimental format with show elements. In addition, the Muscovites got the shortest off-season in the Premier League – in fact, one month, given that on June 11 they played in the Russian Cup final. At the same time, the red-blue lost the team’s second scorer after Fedor Chalov – Jesus Medina, who moved to Spartak, and they still have no transfers to the entrance.

Alexander Ilyin