Do not overdo it: blue and white will face Zenit after a series of victories in the RPL

The players of Dynamo Moscow will try to consolidate their success in the Russian Cup, and after passing Spartak in this tournament, they intend to stop Zenit St. Petersburg, which is fighting for gold, in the championship. This match in the upcoming 22nd round of the RPL will be the central one. In addition to him, it is also worth highlighting the home games of the club's competitors from the Northern Capital — Krasnodar will host Pari Nizhny Novgorod, and Moscow's Lokomotiv will play at home with Tolyatti Akron.

Dynamo – Zenit

This week Dynamo made a significant step towards solving the task for the spring — winning the Cup of Russia. Despite the defeat in the second game against Spartak (0:1), the blue and white team went further thanks to a crushing victory in the first match (5:2). Now they will play in the final of the "RPL Path" with Krasnodar.

Petersburgers also played in the Cup this week — in the second stage of the "Path of the Regions" semi-final, they beat Dynamo Makhachkala minimally at home (1-0), scoring the only goal from a disputed penalty kick. Zenit is having a difficult time in the Russian Championship — with not very high-quality play, they beat Baltika Kaliningrad (1-0) and Spartak (2-0) at home, and between these matches they lost to Orenburg.

Nevertheless, Sergei Semak's team is second, losing only one point to the leading Krasnodar. Dynamo is stuck in the middle of the table after a disastrous first part of the season. But with the arrival of Rolan Gusev as head coach in the winter and after the first training camps under his leadership, the team's game improved. In addition to Spartak's passage in the Cup, Dynamo won all three league matches, rising to seventh place and now 11 points behind third.

"We have an interesting match against a difficult opponent ahead of us, but we will prepare for the game against Zenit," Dynamo Moscow midfielder Timofey Marinkin told Izvestia. — I believe that we can beat any team, as we proved this spring. Spartak deservedly won the Cup, played good games in the championship and won them. So we will do everything to continue these successes. If we play with the same dedication as the previous matches, we will continue to win. We will do everything to please Dynamo fans again.

Departure flight: Krasnodar defeated CSKA

The removal of the defender buried the Army team in the "RPL Path" of the Russian Cup, Spartak is on the verge of repeating their fate.

Krasnodar – Pari Nizhny Novgorod

Like Dynamo, Krasnodar succeeded in the semi-finals of the Russian Cup's "RPL Path" this week. He lost the first game away to CSKA Moscow (1:3). But in the second leg he had a total advantage over the army team and turned it into a crushing victory with a score of 4:0.

Murad Musayev's team is also doing well in the championship. There was a misfire in the away game with Rubin Kazan (1:2), but we managed to win the other two spring matches — 2:1 away against Rostov and Sochi. This allows Krasnodar to lead the RPL and claim the second championship in a row.

His closest rival is having a very difficult season and is fighting a desperate battle for survival. But in the last two rounds, Pari Nizhny Novgorod managed to beat Sochi (2:1) and Samara Krylia Sovetov (3:0), their direct competitors at the bottom of the table. This allowed Alexey Shpilevsky's team to get out of the direct relegation zone and into the transition zone. The gap from the 12th place, which gives the right to remain in the RPL without joints, is only one point.

"If Krasnodar plays to its best, as it did in the match against CSKA, it will easily win against Nizhny Novgorod," Maxim Demenko, a former Bulls midfielder, said in a conversation with Izvestia. — If the quality of the team's game is like in the confrontation with Sochi, where the victory over the outsider was almost missed, then there will be problems in the upcoming match.

Lokomotiv – Akron

Lokomotiv is third, five points behind the leader. At the same time, spring began ambiguously for the "railwaymen". In the championship, they scored only four points out of nine in three matches. Last week's defeat by Rubin Kazan (0-3) turned out to be a particularly strong setback.

These misfires prevented Loko from catching up with Krasnodar, although there were chances of this until recently. This week, Mikhail Galaktionov's team also lost offensively (2:2, 4:5 on penalties) to Samara Wings of the Soviets in the Path of the Regions of the Russian Cup.

Akron started the spring poorly, with just one point in three rounds. But while he is in tenth place, a successful autumn period is affecting, when Zaur Tedeev's wards made a serious groundwork in the struggle for survival. However, now the Tolyatti team's gap from the transition zone has been reduced to one point, so they definitely need to beat Loko in order to strengthen their positions.

— Lokomotiv looks like the favorite of the match, but it is completely unclear to what extent the club and the coaches drew the right conclusions from the failure in Kazan, — Nikolai Naumov, former president of the Railwaymen, told Izvestia. — Besides, a difficult cup trip could take away the strength of the team. Therefore, to a large extent, everything depends on whether Akron has come to its senses after an unsuccessful start to spring. And there can be serious surprises from him, especially if his leader Artem Dzyuba catches his courage and plays to the limit of his abilities.

There will also be five more matches in the upcoming round. CSKA Moscow will host Dynamo Makhachkala, Spartak Moscow will visit Orenburg, Akhmat Grozny will meet Rostov at home, Baltika Kaliningrad will play Sochi at home, Rubin Kazan will travel to Wings of the Soviets Samara.