"The teams from the bottom of the RPL table are making the most of themselves"

On December 6, the football players of Rubin Kazan will complete the 2025 game year for themselves with an away match of the 18th round of the Russian Championship against Rostov. They will go on a winter break in the season, which will resume in the spring. Rashid Rakhimov's team is in seventh place, 14 points behind the first. In the past two seasons, under the same coach and with almost the same composition, the club from the capital of Tatarstan finished in seventh and eighth places.

After last weekend's away defeat by Zenit St. Petersburg (0:1), Rubin midfielder Oleg Ivanov assessed whether his team was stagnating in development, wished that its leader, Albanian striker Mirlind Daku, would stay in Kazan at least until the end of the season, and also commented on the possibility of playing in the RPL before 40 years old.

— Is there no feeling that Rubin in its current form has stalled in its development? Now it's the same seventh or eighth place as in the last two seasons, and you're being eliminated from the Russian Cup for the second time in a row by a First league team.

— I don't think we have anything stalled. Looking at the entire standings of the current championship, we can say that, plus or minus, everything is predictable. With the exception of two or three positions held by the Moscow teams and Baltika, of course, she especially surprised everyone.

— At the same time, in previous seasons, there was a feeling from the outside that Rubin could take a step forward and compete, for example, for a place in the top 5. But in the current championship I lost a lot of points with the teams from the bottom of the table — with Orenburg (2:2), Akron (2:2 at the time of its crisis), Pari Nizhny Novgorod (0:0), what prevents your team from rising above the usual level?

— Yes, but this is due to the fact that the teams that are at the bottom of the RPL table are also making the most of themselves. Every next game is like the last ending for them. For them, any victory, any point scored is like a breath of fresh air. If we talk about Nizhny Novgorod, which recently drew with us, then we saw how it continued to play with Akron (2:1), defeating it away. Although Akron had a long unbeaten streak before that.

— Do you see any opportunities for Rubin to catch up with the leading group?

— Let's look at the match against Zenit. If, having personnel problems, we basically show a decent game against one of the flagships of Russian football, then with a qualitative strengthening of the squad we can do what you are talking about.

— Don't you think that your leader Mirlind Daka has slowed down compared to the last two seasons?

— Well, what did he slow down in? Mirlind scored maybe one or two fewer goals than a year ago and two years ago at the same stage of the championship. So I think Daku is playing at his level. We have one more game ahead of us with Rostov before the winter break — I hope he will recover for it. But so, in principle, Dakar is going according to the normal schedule of goals scored. If he had two or three goals now after 17 rounds, then we could talk about some problems. As it is, he has six of them. In addition, it must be borne in mind that the opponents are now studying the games more thoroughly than in previous seasons. Everyone already knows roughly what he is like. Therefore, the opponents' defense pays much more attention to him.

— Considering the big role that Daku has been playing in Rubin's offense these two and a half seasons, what happens if Kazan offers very good money for him in winter and Mirlind leaves? After all, rumors about interests in him from Europe and from Russian top clubs are constantly circulating.

— If I were the president of the club or the CEO, I would probably have an understanding of how to solve this issue, where to spend money to get results (smiles). As it is, I'm just as much a player as Daku. I play with him in the same team, we train together. And as a football player, I want Mirlind to spend the rest of this season at Rubin. And then, if there is a high-quality offer from another club, our club will consider it.

— Are you trying on the role of the club's head yet?

— I won't try it on at all.

— And what kind of activity do you tend to pursue after your football career ends?

— Coaching.

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— You will turn 40 next August, and you are one of the oldest players in the RPL. Are you thinking about how ready you are to continue playing in the next championship, have you discussed the possibility of a new one-year contract with Rubin?

— No, right now I'm just enjoying football, the opportunity to play it. And in the spring, at the end of the season, we will sit down with the club's management and talk, there is an understanding of who I can be next. As they did at the previous ends of the season.

— In March 2023, Igor Lebedenko scored a goal for Torpedo and became, at 39, the oldest goalscorer in the history of the Russian Premier League. Do you feel like you can beat his record?

— I'm not sure about the goal.

— And by age at the time of entering the field?

— It depends on supply and demand.