Zenit defeated Spartak with a score of 2:1 in the Russian Cup match
The culmination of the next Russian cup week was the first match of the semi-final stage of the “RPL Path”, in which Spartak destroyed Zenit before the break, taking the lead, but after that it was brutally torn to pieces and lost - 1:2, conceding two goals from the young Pedro. On the same day, Lokomotiv left the Fonbet Russian Cup, losing 0:1 to Ural in the quarterfinal round of the Path of the Regions.
It was certainly a special match. Special in every sense. A white-hot stadium that terribly wanted Spartak to finally do something worthy of itself this year. The hosts' mentor, Guillermo Abascal, taking a nervous step along the edge, doesn't even try to hide the emotions boiling inside and looks like a general leading a big battle not far from the front line, who understands that right now everything is being decided. For him personally, too. And a strange game. A game that is shocking with its style and its details.
That evening, as if mocking Spartak, Zenit coach Sergei Semak left on the bench almost everyone with whom the power and brilliance of his club is primarily associated. There, on the bench, sat Claudinho, Wendel, Douglas Santos, Mateo Cassier and watched as their partners, who rarely got into the starting lineup, gave Spartak the ball and territory with such ease that some outsiders of the Russian championship do not give them to them. And also because of the suffering of the young prodigy Pedro, who for a long time was absolutely useless and unnoticed, and exiled from the attack line to cover the left flank of Gustav Mantuana. No, strictly speaking, there was not a single Zenit player whose movements would hint that he was comfortable in this experimental scheme.
The scenario with Spartak crushing the domestic flagship, tearing it apart, seemed completely anti-science fiction. But that’s exactly what happened on the field.
The Spartak team scored after another long and dense attack, which resulted in a throw into the penalty area and a victory won by the Spartak grenadier Alexander Sobolev in a difficult fight with the Zenit grenadier Rodrigao. Sobolev's shot, clumsy in appearance, actually fell comfortably on the foot of Manfred Ugalde, who shot goalkeeper Mikhail Kerzhakov from half-flight. And it was impossible to think of a goal more natural than this.
Zenit came to life slightly only in the middle of the first half. But his fans still had to rejoice at the little things that changed little. Here Vilmar Barrios cut a cool cross to Alexander Kovalenko, who handled the ball poorly. For the first time, Pedro exploded, but he was unlucky: he shot perfectly, but the ball went beyond the goal line, licking the post.
Semak, of course, could not stand it and released the leading fighters - Wendel and Nina - after the break. And their exit seemed to switch the mode in which Zenit played. From a victim of a cruel experiment, he turned into a real Zenit instantly, without a transition period. Everything was turned upside down. In the skin of being driven by a pack of hungry wolves, Spartak found itself, which did not know how to get out from under the Zenit pressure.
The goal came quickly. And he matured when, after a series of bounces from the Spartak players rushing in panic around the penalty area and falling like pins, the ball bounced to Pedru, who had settled down and calmed down his jitters. However, in this situation he would have scored with jitters, tremors, and even with his eyes blindfolded: the gates in front of the striker were wide open.
And this, as it turned out, was just the beginning of the 18-year-old actor’s personal show. A little later, Zenit, which had already strengthened itself with both Claudinho and Andrei Mostov, responded to the angry Spartak, who decided that they must at all costs try to look for happiness ahead again, with their chic - wide, rhythmic - attack. And he taxied towards a grandiose shot from the corner of the penalty area into the top corner by the Brazilian debutant, which soon almost helped Ivan Sergeev score.
“Spartak”, having experienced this spectacular performance, also came up with some adjustments. He rushed to get even, but against a different team than the one that opposed him in the first half, Zenit. This one was strong and calm enough to resist and preserve the tiny, but apparently incredibly valuable margin of safety obtained before the return match.
Two more cup games served as a “warm-up” for the central match of the day. One of them resulted in the collapse of Lokomotiv, which at the second stage of the quarterfinal round of the “Path of Regions”, which, unlike the “RPL Path”, does not provide for the right to misfire, lost to “Ural” on the road, conceding an early goal from Emmerson, and then, having squandered the not so numerous opportunities to restore balance. And the most interesting event related to the match happened immediately after it. The coach of the Moscow club, Mikhail Galaktionov, seemed to take this defeat extremely painfully, admitting that he managed to “initiate a meeting with the management” on the topic of “how to live further,” since clearly “something is going wrong.”
Well, you really can’t argue with what “goes wrong.” After the restart of the season, Lokomotiv, which just looked almost like one of the contenders for gold, managed to scrape together two points in three rounds of the championship, and in the Russian Cup first lost to Baltika on penalties in the “upper” bracket, and now , having dropped to the “bottom”, he was completely eliminated from the second most important tournament.
Another match took place as part of the RPL Path. In it, CSKA created a margin of safety for itself before the semi-final return match, defeating Baltika on the road - 1:0. And the game was remembered primarily by the way in which Viktor Davila hit the Kaliningrad goal. You rarely see such exceptional clarity and purity of overhead kicks in a high jump even in the “Big Five” championships.
