Fight with the Bulls: Krasnodar beat Spartak with two disposals

Following the results of the two top matches of the 14th round of the Russian Football Championship, the situation at the top of the RPL table has been significantly updated. Krasnodar played a bright match with two disposals against Spartak and retained the sole lead due to a minimal victory (2:1), as Lokomotiv Moscow, which was on a par with it, suffered the first defeat in the current draw, losing to Zenit St. Petersburg on the road and falling back to fifth place. And Dynamo Moscow continues to get stuck in the middle of the table, losing points again. This time, it drew away with Rubin Kazan (0:0).

Krasnodar — Spartak

A day before the match in Krasnodar, Zenit equaled the current leader in points with its victory over Loko. Two days earlier, CSKA won 2-0 at home against Pari Nizhny Novgorod and beat the southern club by one point. Therefore, Krasnodar had to win in order to confidently retain the first place. For Spartak, three points in an away game with the defending champion was one of the last chances to get closer to the top five.

But the red-and-white crisis and the lack of a coherent game when spending tens of millions of euros on player transfers were also evident in the last match. Krasnodar opened the scoring in the first half — Alexander Chernikov scored the ball from John Cordoba's pass. And the guests were very lucky that they did not miss the break yet, as the champion had a lot of chances. In one of them, they hit the barbell.

Nevertheless, already in the middle of the second half, Cordoba doubled the lead. Spartak had created almost nothing up front by this point. But in the end, the teams gave fire. In the 88th minute, Cordoba received a second yellow card and was sent off the field. Seven minutes later, a red card for two yellow cards went to his teammate Douglas Augusto.

Between these events, Spartak still scored one goal — it was created by Levi Garcia. Krasnodar could have missed the victory out of the blue. Especially when he has two fewer players on the field. But almost immediately the final whistle sounded. And the Bulls retained their lead, ahead of CSKA by two points and Zenit by three. Spartak is still sixth — the distance from the first place has increased to 10 points.

— Krasnodar was much better the whole match, and in the first half it just tore apart the opponent, did whatever it wanted with him, — Andrey Chervichenko, the former owner of Spartak, shared his opinion with Izvestia. — Two goals plus the posts, the crossbar, a goal not counted in the first half due to a slight offside. The Red and white couldn't do anything. Once again, as in most matches this year, they had a set of players, not a team. Only at the end of the game did Spartak begin to flutter. And it may seem that he pinned down Krasnodar, but this is more likely due to the fact that, at 2-0, the hosts began to play to hold the score. In general, they outplayed the opponent and deservedly won.

Zenit — Lokomotiv

Both teams followed Krasnodar before this round. Lokomotiv remained the last club not to lose a single match in the championship. However, a large number of draws led to the fact that the "railwaymen" were behind the "bulls", rather than leading by a solid margin.

They were unable to play in this match due to the disqualification of the main central defender Cesar Montes. And the key striker of the red and green Dmitry Vorobyov was absent due to injury. In addition, midfielder Sergei Pinyaev was still unable to play, having missed about two months since the summer and only briefly coming on as a substitute in a couple of October matches.

Zenit's midfielder Andrei Mostovoy, who became a crime hero at the beginning of last week, started the match on the bench. On October 27, REN TV learned that a group of people had tried to kidnap a football player four days earlier. In St. Petersburg, on Vyazovaya Street, he was pushed into a car, but the player managed to fight back and get out of it, managing to repel the intruders with the help of his friend, former hockey player Alexander Grakun, who was in his company.

On October 26, three days after the incident and a day before it became known to the public, Mostovoy joined the starting line-up for the home championship match against Dynamo Moscow and scored a beautiful goal with his heel. At the beginning of last week, the kidnappers were detained by law enforcement agencies. It turned out that this was not the only such episode, and the kidnappings were carried out in order to obtain a ransom.

Mostovoy started the match with Loko in the reserve. His team quickly took the lead — in the ninth minute, Pedro scored from Maxim Glushenkov's pass. Zenit controlled almost the entire course of the match, but for a long time could not hit the opponent's goal for the second time. The visitors only had a good chance to equalize towards the end of the match, but, being in a good position in front of the goal, Nikolay Komlichenko could not hit the ball.

Mostovoy came on as a substitute in the 75th minute and finished off his opponent a quarter of an hour later, making the score 2-0. He celebrated this goal by wearing a black balaclava mask, which criminals usually wear. Thus, he made an ironic reference to the incident. Zenit is now third and only three points away from Krasnodar. Loko dropped to fifth place with five points behind the leader.

"We've had worse games this season, but you can't count the best match against Zenit either," Lokomotiv midfielder Artyom Karpukas said in a conversation with Izvestia. — We didn't have enough chances to realize them. But we had some good approaches that we could squeeze something out of to even it up.

Rubin — Dynamo

With good squads and big ambitions, both teams are coming to the end of the first round in the middle of the table. And with serious lags from the top five. The face-to-face match in Kazan gave one of them a chance to get at least a little closer to the leaders.

But in the end, they only got further bogged down in the middle. Dynamo created some good chances to score goals in the first half. Bitello was especially close to scoring, having thrown the goalkeeper of the hosts, Evgeny Stavera, who had gone far into the penalty area. The ball was already flying into an empty net, but at the last moment Konstantin Nizhegorodov kicked it out of there.

This defender became the hero of the episode, but already in the second half, in the 58th minute, a moment with a negative sign happened to him. Because of the second yellow card, he was sent off the field. Left outnumbered, Rubin focused more on defense. And Dynamo couldn't do anything ahead. As a result, it's a zero draw. The Kazan club is seventh and 13 points behind the leader. Dynamo is one line below him. Krasnodar has already pulled away from them by 15 points.

There were also five more matches in the last round. Kaliningrad Baltika won 2-0 at home against Akhmat Grozny and moved up to fourth place, five points behind the first. Orenburg defeated Sochi on its own field (3:1). CSKA Moscow prevailed at home over Pari Nizhny Novgorod (2-0) and remains second. Tolyatti Akron won away from Rostov (1-0). Dynamo Makhachkala defeated Krylia Sovetov Samara at home (2:0).