"I think Zenit will become the champion"

Over the weekend, Zenit St. Petersburg will try to win the Russian Football Championship for the seventh time in a row, and will also celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founding. Winning the championship will depend not only on the blue-white-blues, who will play at home with Akhmat Grozny in the last, 30th round, but also on the leading Krasnodar, which is one point ahead of Zenit and will play at home with Dynamo Moscow.

And among the events dedicated to the club's anniversary, there will be a Sunday legends match featuring the best Zenit players in its history. One of them is Pavel Pogrebnyak, the winner and top scorer of the 2008 UEFA Cup, who also won the European Super Cup that year. In an interview with Izvestia, he gave a forecast of who will win the RPL gold this season, shared his expectations for the upcoming grand celebration of the club's anniversary and spoke about his impressions of participating in the charity match "It's still me", which took place on May 19 at Sapsan Arena with the participation of football, cross-country skiing and biathlon stars.

— What was it like for you recently to play against skiers and biathletes in a charity match?

— It was a pretty intense game, the score turned out to be 6:5, we won by just one goal. The ski guys did well, they kept the intrigue to the last. There was a scoring extravaganza, an uncompromising fight, and our players got very worked up during the match. But the right team won (smiles). The main thing is that we held a good event, with the help of which we managed to raise more than 1 million rubles to support veterans of our sport.

— Is it hard to play against active skiers like Savely Korostelev and biathlete Maxim Tsvetkov, who have such sports that physical training is very serious?

— So they went out for a warm-up an hour before the start of the match. It doesn't cost them anything to run a dozen. But we held the punch. We can say that we won technically.

— What do you expect from the last round of the RPL? Who will be the champion?

— I think it's Zenit.

— Why not Krasnodar?

— He will play with Dynamo Moscow, which is currently on the move, — Rolan Gusev (acting head coach, who replaced Marcel Lichka in early May. — Izvestia) did an excellent job. Maybe he will have four wins in four matches this season. His work deserves respect. The team was inspired by him. Therefore, it will be very difficult for Krasnodar. Zenit will probably beat Akhmat at home.

— Are you satisfied with how effective Alexander Sobolev has become lately?

— He really improved after my pass, when I went to the center of the field with the blockade team before the Zenit match with Paris NN and we made a symbolic first kick at the ball in honor of the approaching 80th anniversary of the Victory. And after my pass, Sasha started scoring in the RPL. This is a joke, of course. But he did well, he added.

— How do you assess Sobolev's prospects of gaining a foothold at Zenit next season and becoming one of his own for St. Petersburg?

— I think he still has a lot to grow. First of all, we must prove our effectiveness.

"Let Zenit win the championship — it's somehow more familiar after all"

Dynamo Moscow football player Dmitry Skopintsev — about the last round of the Russian Premier League, the match with Krasnodar and the end of Anton Shunin's career

— Were you surprised by Zenit's departure from the Russian Cup following the results of the two matches of the final of the "Way of the RPL" against CSKA?

— I was surprised. The 2-0 advantage after the first match was very good. And CSKA deserves credit for beating him in the second leg and winning the penalty shootout. It's a great spring season for the Army. I would like them to take the third place and, possibly, leave in the offseason with a trophy in the form of the Cup of Russia. Why did Zenit miss the victory? It's hard to understand. Perhaps there was a lot of pressure due to the Russian championship, where there is now a very turbulent zone at the top of the table. Maybe because of this, they were betting more on the championship, and in the Cup, at 2-0, they wanted to get off with little effort.

— If Zenit does not win the championship, are cardinal changes possible at the club in the form of the departure of Sergey Semak from the post of head coach and Alexander Medvedev from the post of CEO?

— Let's think more positively. Moreover, this year the St. Petersburg club celebrates its 100th anniversary. We have a legends match scheduled for May 25th. I'm looking forward to taking the field for this match in front of 70,000 fans.