The Anointed King: how the goalkeeper brought Spartak victory in the Cup

The football players of Spartak Moscow won the Russian Cup. In the final match, they turned out to be stronger than Krasnodar — 1:1 in regular time, 5:4 on penalties. The move of the red and white head coach Juan Carlos Carcedo worked again, releasing goalkeeper Ilya Pomazun at the end of the post-match series, who, as in the April game against Zenit, turned out to be stronger than his counterpart.

The path to the trophy

Spartak became the first team in the history of the Russian Cup to win the trophy after being eliminated from one of the stages. This opportunity has appeared since 2022, when the RFU changed the format of the tournament, dividing it into two grids — the RPL Path and the Regions Path. Losing in a two-legged match in the RPL Path playoffs at some stages began to mean not relegation from the competition, but a transition to the Path of the regions, where it was possible to reach the Superfinal and compete for the trophy with the winner of the RPL Path.

In the first three seasons, this did not help the losers, as the Superfinal was won by those who reached it through the RPL Path. CSKA Moscow did it twice in 2023 and 2025, and Zenit St. Petersburg did it once in 2024. Spartak clung to a second chance this spring.

He flew out of the Way of the RPL in March, losing two matches to Dynamo Moscow." (2:5; 1:0) in the quarterfinals. Interestingly, it didn't really help the blue and white, as they lost to Krasnodar in the next stage." (0:0; 0:0, on penalties 5:6), and the departure from the semifinals according to the regulations does not involve participation in the Path of the regions.

Spartak, on the other hand, began to fight through a new grid, where each round takes place in the format of a one-match confrontation. First, there was an away meeting with Zenit, which ended in regular time with a score of 0:0. And Juan Carlos Carcedo, shortly before the end of the meeting, replaced the main goalkeeper Alexander Maksimenko with Ilya Pomazun.

Coaches rarely take such steps. The most famous case is the quarterfinals of the 2014 World Cup, when the head coach of the Netherlands national team, Louis Van Gaal, replaced Jasper Cillessen with Tim Krul in the last minutes of extra time, and he won the penalty shootout (4:3) after 0-0 in regular and extra time. Interestingly, then in the semifinal with Argentina, a similar trick did not work: after a goalless draw, the series was lost 2:4.

In the cup match with Zenit, Carcedo's move paid off. In the post-match series, Pomazun twice beat off the blows of the players of the St. Petersburg club, and Spartak won 7:6. Then, at the penultimate stage, he beat CSKA (1:0) and reached Krasnodar in the Superfinal. The Bulls have been heading for a golden double all season this season, but their margin of safety was just a little short.

At first, they lost the lead in the penultimate round of the championship and eventually gave the RPL gold to Zenit. Now they had to rehabilitate themselves with the Cup. But Spartak was also overly motivated, as it had not won trophies of this level since 2022, and failed the last championship, taking fourth place.

They held their horses: Spartak left CSKA without the Russian Cup

The players came to the match with posters of the Immortal Regiment campaign

Anointing again

The match between Krasnodar and Spartak broke the attendance record for the finals of the Russian Cup. On a warm day on May 24, almost 73,000 spectators came to the stands of the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow. Among them were various VIPs like Alexander Ovechkin and many others.

Interestingly, despite Pomazun's success in the penalty shootout with Zenit, Maksimenko remained the main goalkeeper who played the remaining matches of the championship and Cup. The Superfinal was no exception.

Spartak opened the scoring in the middle of the first half: Pablo Solari scored the goal. But in the middle of the second, Krasnodar equalized thanks to a goal from Douglas Augusto. In the last minutes of regular time, Carcedo released Pomazun again instead of Maksimenko.

Ilya, from the very first shot of the post-match series, began to justify his trust by hitting the ball sent into the goal by Eduard Spertsyan. However, the referee saw the goalkeeper step forward ahead of time, so he forced him to interrupt. And then Spertsyan outplayed the Anointed One.

But the goalkeeper beat off Krasnodar's third and fourth shots, which were played by Juan Boselli and Kevin Lenini, bringing Spartak victory in the series (4:3) and victory in the Russian Cup.

"I believed in Ilya from the very beginning, so I'm not surprised that he plays like this in the series,— Spartak midfielder Igor Dmitriev said in a conversation with Izvestia. — He always takes great penalties in training, and he showed himself in the game. But this trophy is a credit to the whole team, the whole coaching staff. There were very difficult decisive matches, but we believed that we could win the Cup. We are Spartak, and we must always set maximum goals for ourselves. And now we are happy that we managed to bring the trophy to the club and please our fans.

The Russian Cup superfinal was the last in the Russian football season. The next one starts in the second half of July.