The third approach: why Karpin decided to focus on the national team again
Valery Karpin has become the relieved head coach of the Russian national team for the third time. He left a similar post at Dynamo Moscow. Officially, this is formalized as a voluntary dismissal. The 56-year-old specialist himself explained this decision by the need to focus on working with the national team and preparing it for its return to the international arena. But most experts do not consider the latter factor to be a signal of the imminent lifting of sanctions against the country's main football team and are more inclined to explain the changes by Karpin's disastrous results at Dynamo, which ranks 10th in the Russian championship after the first round.
Resignation and explanation
The fact that Karpin may leave Dynamo as early as the November break for the national team games, without waiting for the winter break in the club season, Sport-Express wrote on Wednesday, November 12, on the day of the national team's friendly match against Peru (1-1). The press service of the blue and white immediately stated that this information was not true. For several days, this insider was sharply criticized and refuted by various bloggers and the media. But after the second match of the Russian national team against Chile (0:2) and Karpin's return to the club, it became clear that the information that was not so obvious at first turned out to be correct.
Interestingly, it was not the club itself that announced the coach's departure from Dynamo, but the Russian Football Union (RFU), Karpin's employer as the head coach of the national team. It was the RFU that used its resources to give a direct speech to Valery Georgievich, who announced his retirement from the ranks of the blue and white and explained this decision.
"This is a balanced and thoughtful decision," Karpin said on the RFU's official website. — Today, my only priority remains the results of the national team, preparation for individual matches, and for the team's return to the international level. We all have a lot of work to do to achieve this.
The mention of preparations for the team's return to the international level could be perceived as a signal that the national team may be allowed to participate in official tournaments in 2026, from which it was suspended in February 2022. But the problem is that Karpin explained his departure from Rostov earlier this year with approximately the same motives.
The history of his combined work in clubs and the national team is extremely changeable. Valery Karpin became the head of the Russian national team in the summer of 2021, but at the same time remained at the head of Rostov, with whom he had been working since December 2017. Then he had to play the decisive seven matches of the 2022 World Cup qualifying tournament in Qatar.
The appointment to the national team happened right before the start of the new Russian championship. After the defeat of Rostov in the first two rounds, Karpin left the Donskoy club and began working only in the national team. He was unable to enter the World Cup directly with her, but in March 2022 he had to compete for entry through the play-offs. The first opponent in them was Poland, which refused to go to Moscow after February 24, 2022 and was supported by FIFA, receiving automatic passage further. And our national team was suspended from all official competitions.
In this regard, in March 2023, Karpin was again allowed to combine work in the national team and the club. And he returned to Rostov. After that, I worked with him in the RPL for almost two years and went away to friendly matches of the national team. At the end of February 2025, Valery Georgievich left the club again.
"This is a difficult decision dictated by the need to focus as much as possible on working for the Russian national team," Karpin's words were quoted on Rostov's official website. — The interests of individual clubs cannot be above the interests of the national team representing our country.
It is noteworthy that the interests of the national team did not prevent Karpin's three key assistants, Jonathan Alba, Viktor Onopko and Vitaly Kafanov, from continuing to combine their work in the national team and Rostov. Kafanov, who works as a goalkeeper coach, left the Donskoy club three months later and has been working only in the national team ever since. Alba and Onopko continue to combine, and Alba has been working as the head coach of Rostov for the ninth month after Karpin.
The explanations at that time regarding the need to focus on the national team made part of the football community think about possible moves towards lifting sanctions against the national team. However, information about Karpin's negotiations with Dynamo Moscow was already being discussed with might and main. Even after resigning from Rostov, the coach himself and the leadership of the blue and white denied possible cooperation.
But the winter transfer to Dynamo of midfielder Danil Glebov, a key player of Rostov and the national team during Karpin's time, was perceived by many as a signal about the future arrival of Valery Georgievich. That's what happened in June 2025.
The RFU announced that it had given the go-ahead for the combination, but stressed that in the event of a breakup of the national team, Karpin would have to leave the club. Karpin himself also stated that the national team was his priority, and the combination was possible only for a period when Russia was not at official competitions. At the same time, his departure from Rostov, citing the interests of the national team and his appearance in Dynamo three months later, raised questions.
— Now few people will believe that Karpin left the club in connection with the possible return of the national team to the international arena, — Vyacheslav Koloskov, honorary president of the RFU, shared his opinion with Izvestia. — Since this is exactly what he referred to at the end of February, leaving Rostov, it is difficult now to link the situation with Dynamo with a potential break-up. Although there have been some recent developments in our sport, our water polo teams were allowed to compete in early November, the first time since 2022 that Russian athletes have been allowed to compete in team sports. But FIFA and UEFA did not react to this in any way and did not give public signals that something might change regarding the players. Moreover, UEFA President Alexander Ceferin has repeatedly stressed that the return of Russian teams is possible only after the end of a special military operation. If he and the members of the UEFA executive committee change their position and do not wait for the end of hostilities, then everything will be fine. But so far they have not given such signals. Therefore, I personally am inclined to believe that Karpin left Dynamo because of the club's disastrous results.
Failures at Dynamo
Having taken over Dynamo in June, Karpin received a three-year contract and great trust in breeding. So, after him and Glebov, defender Maxim Osipenko left Rostov. The club has taken over from the competition striker Ivan Sergeev, known for his performances for Samara "Wings of the Soviets" and St. Petersburg "Zenit", one of the most productive forwards of the RPL in recent years.
Midfielder Anton Miranchuk, who played for Swiss Sion last season, returned to Russia after joining Dynamo. Another reinforcement in the middle line is Kazakh midfielder Bakhtiyor Zainutdinov, who has played for Turkish Besiktas for the past three years and is known in Russia for his performances for Rostov and CSKA Moscow.
Zainutdinov was well known to Karpin from working together at Rostov, and Sergeev and Miranchuk were in the national team. In addition, Dynamo signed Brazilian Rubens. Thus, according to the Transfermarket website, the club spent €21 million under Karpin, the largest investment of the blue and white in newcomers in a single transfer window since 2019.
But the results were immediately unsuccessful. In the first round, Dynamo scored only four victories in the national championship. It lost to all direct competitors, and won only against the teams from the bottom of the table, who were in deep crisis at the time of the meetings with the blue and white - at home against Rostov (1:0) and Pari Nizhny Novgorod (3:0), away from Orenburg (3:1) and the Samara "Wings of the Soviets" (3:2).
In early October, Dmitry Gafin, a key figure in the club's leadership over the past five years and the most successful blue and white manager in their recent history, left the position of chairman of the Dynamo Board of Directors. Under his leadership, the team began to consistently compete for championship medals and won them twice (bronze in 2022 and 2024), and a year and a half ago I was one step away from the first gold in 50 years.
Sport-Express claimed that Gafin's disagreements with Karpin were the reason for his resignation. Allegedly, Dmitry Alexandrovich was initially against this candidacy for the post of head coach, but it was pushed through by his predecessor at the head of the board of directors, Yuri Solovyov, one of VTB's top managers, who over the past two years has been formally unrelated to the club, but as one of the leaders of the Dynamo-owned bank, who retained influence on key decisions.
Against the background of such a carte blanche, Karpin, by the November break for the national team games, along with Dynamo, was only in tenth place in the championship. The team has not won a single game in the last five matches. The apotheosis was the home defeat in the last, 15th, round from Tolyatti Akron (1:2).
It is noteworthy that Rostov, led by his former assistant Alba, who left Karpin, is now above Dynamo in the table. The only success of the blue and white team in six months can be called an away victory over Zenit St. Petersburg in the first quarterfinal match of the Russian Cup (3:1) with a good chance of advancing to the next round - the second leg will be held on November 27.
— Unfortunately, it is very difficult to cling to any positive in Karpin's work over the past six months, - Sergei Silkin, the former head coach of Dynamo Moscow, told Izvestia. — He was appointed to the club for the task of fighting, if not for the championship, then for medals. And now it is not visible at all: the gap from the third place is 13 points. But the gap from the transition zone is only three points. And we don't know if the team is even in danger of relegation. It would be nice to have some interesting game when you're just unlucky. But Dynamo players create few chances at other people's gates. Almost no player has progressed in these six months. I don't know if combining with the national team has affected Karpin's work, but lately he hasn't been doing well either, judging by how poorly Russia played against Peru and Chile. It is logical that such a decision was made to part with the club — it does not matter whether Karpin himself resigned or was asked by the management.
Rolan Gusev has been appointed acting head coach of Dynamo. He was already in this position in May after the resignation of the previous coach of the blue and white Marcel Lichka, and since 2023 he has worked as an assistant for him and Karpin.
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