Junction with horses: will the crisis CSKA be able to prevent Zenit

In the upcoming 28th round of the Russian Football Championship, two top-ranked matches will be held, which are of direct importance in the distribution of medals. Three rounds before the finish, Zenit, which claims gold, will visit CSKA, and Lokomotiv, which is leading the race for bronze, will play in the Moscow derby with Dynamo. Meanwhile, the leader and reigning champion Krasnodar will have to visit Akron.

CSKA — Zenit

Zenit is one point behind Krasnodar and has no right to misfire. From the point of view of the composition, CSKA is the most difficult of the rivals of the St. Petersburg club in the rest of the championship. Next, he will have a home meeting with Sochi, which occupies the last place, and a trip to Rostov, which is tenth, which can resolve the issue of maintaining a residence permit in the RPL by the last round.

But against the background of the CSKA spring crisis, it is possible that Zenit will have much fewer problems with him than in previous seasons. The army men went on a winter break as one of the contenders for gold. They were not far behind the first place, and after a strong transfer campaign, many considered them favorites of the championship race.

But the strikers Luciano Gondu (Zenit), Dmitry Barinov (Lokomotiv) and Danila Kozlov (Krasnodar), acquired from direct competitors, have not yet strengthened the red and blue. As well as defender Mateus Reis, who transferred from Sporting Lisbon.

This spring, Fabio Celestini's men scored only two wins in nine matches in the championship, with four defeats and three draws. CSKA cannot win in the last four rounds. Moreover, points are lost with the teams from the bottom of the standings — a home defeat from the outsider of the RPL Sochi (0:1), an away draw with Samara Krylia Sovetov (1:1) and a home draw with Rostov (1:1). In the last round, the red and blue played away to a draw with Rubin Kazan, the middleweight of the current championship (0:0).

The team is in sixth place, four points behind the third-placed Lokomotiv. The main tournament for the Army team in the rest of the season is the Russian Cup, where on May 6 they will play Spartak in the final of the Path of the Regions.

— In its current state, Zenit is much stronger than the army, — former CSKA defender Vladimir Ponomarev shared his opinion with Izvestia. — The St. Petersburg team has a lot of problems with the game and the motivation of individual players, but in general, the class and overall condition are higher. CSKA is in an absolutely ruined state, there is no game in any of the lines. And I just can't imagine what the team can do against Zenit. Only if you get a draw, but only with a lot of luck. No one has canceled the luck factor in football, so anything is possible, but other than that, I don't see that the Army team had a chance to take the points from Peter.

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Lokomotiv — Dynamo (Moscow)

Lokomotiv, like CSKA, went on a winter break near the first place. But unlike the Army team, he did not conduct a large-scale transfer campaign. On the contrary, he lost his long-term captain Barinov, who went to the red and blue. Therefore, few people were surprised by the spring problems of the "railwaymen".

In the spring, they won only three league matches with three draws and three defeats. In addition, Mikhail Galaktionov's team crashed out of the Russian Cup, losing to Krylia Sovetov on penalties (4:5) after a draw (2:2) in regular time. Loko lost to the same team last week in the championship (0:2).

Nevertheless, the red and green are still third and have a good chance of winning the bronze medal. They are one point ahead of Spartak and three ahead of Baltika Kaliningrad. To hold these positions, Lokomotiv needs to win the derby against Dynamo, which had a great March this spring and an indistinct April. There are two wins in the last six rounds of the championship. The blue and white team is in eighth place in the RPL.

However, they were stuck in the middle of the table in the first part of the season under the former head coach Valery Karpin. Under Rolan Gusev, who replaced him, Dynamo rose slightly in the championship, but the main thing for him is the Russian Cup. On May 5, four days after the meeting with Loko, Dynamo will have an away second leg of the final of the RPL Path against Krasnodar.

"The match will be extremely unpredictable, as both teams have good players, but they have numerous problems in defense and attack," Dmitry Bulykin, a former forward for Lokomotiv and Dynamo, said in a conversation with Izvestia. — At the same time, Loko seems to have an advantage in terms of motivation — they need to win in order to stay in the top three. While Dynamo needs to fight for the Cup, and perhaps Gusev will rotate the squad, take care of some of the players before the match with Krasnodar. But it is unlikely that the team will not try to win against Lokomotiv — Dynamo are trying to fight for victory in every match this spring, even if it does not always work out. Therefore, it will be very difficult for both teams, and everything will be decided by the realization of the moments and who will make fewer mistakes in defense.

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Akron — Krasnodar

Krasnodar is not without difficulty gaining points in games with teams from the bottom of the table, but still it has enough class and character to defeat them and hold the lead. This happened in the last round, when the Bulls won a strong-willed victory at home over Dynamo Makhachkala (2:1).

Now the reigning champion is going to visit Akron, a competitor of the Dagestan club in the fight for survival in the RPL. The Tolyatti team has been in crisis for a long time. From the end of November to the middle of April, he scored only one point in seven matches. And I didn't fall into the relegation zone only due to the fact that I performed very well in the fall.

But now this groundwork is lost. However, in the last three rounds, Zaur Tedeev's team stopped losing. And at the end of last week, they unexpectedly defeated away the main sensation of the season, Baltika (1-0), for which it was only the third defeat in the championship.

This success lifted Akron to tenth place. But the gap from the transition zone is only one point, and from the relegation zone — five. And the fight for survival is in full swing.

Also in the upcoming round, Spartak will play away against Krylia Sovetov, Dynamo Makhachkala will host Rostov, Baltika will face Rubin Kazan at home, Sochi will face Orenburg, and Akhmat will face Pari Nizhny Novgorod.