Non-Champions Cup: Moscow teams that failed the RPL season will try to take revenge
The penultimate matches of the Russian Football Cup will actually determine the fate of the season for three of the four remaining teams. The final of the Path of the Regions will feature the Moscow derby between Spartak and CSKA, rivals who are failing the championship. At the same time, the Army team will enter the game after the resignation of head coach Fabio Celestini. In the final of the RPL championship, Krasnodar, the leader of the championship, will host Dynamo Moscow, which is betting on the Cup after an unsuccessful performance in the RPL. The winners of these matches will play each other in the Superfinal.
Spartak – CSKA
Both teams have a theoretical chance of winning the bronze medal, but it is unlikely that such a result can be considered successful, given the expectations before the season. At the same time, Spartak and CSKA went through it in different ways: if the red and white failed the first part, then the army team went through the spring segment.
Spartak was in a fever in the summer and autumn, which led to the November resignation of head coach Dejan Stankovic. By that time, the team had almost dropped out of the championship race. This was a major disappointment for the club, which has spent more than €87 million on transfers in two years, according to Transfermarkt.
In winter, the team was led by Spaniard Carlos Carcedo. With him, the results improved, but they only managed to get involved in the fight for third place. So far, Spartak cannot beat the third-placed Lokomotiv, although it is having an extremely unsuccessful spring.
In these circumstances, the Cup remains the only way to justify the investment and save the season. There was a setback under Carcedo in March, when there was a departure from the "RPL Path" from Dynamo Moscow." (2:5; 1:0). But then, in the semifinals of the "Path of the Regions", Spartak players were able to knock Zenit St. Petersburg out of the tournament — in a guest meeting with the blue-white-blues, the main time ended in a draw (0:0), and they managed to win 7-6 on penalties.
CSKA, on the contrary, confidently spent the first part of the season. A year ago, the club won the Russian Cup and the bronze medal of the championship, but soon the head coach Marko Nikolic left the team, who accepted the offer of the Greek AEK. He was urgently replaced by Fabio Celestini, who had previously scored a golden double with Basel.
The new coach started with CSKA successfully. In the summer, he won the Russian Super Cup, and then from July to December he was in the leading group of the championship. During the winter break, the red and blue finished fourth, but with a slight gap from the leading Krasnodar.
During the break, they thoroughly upgraded, buying their captain Dmitry Barinov from Lokomotiv, exchanging their central defender Igor Diveev for Zenit striker Luciano Gonda, as well as acquiring midfielder Danila Kozlov from Krasnodar and defender Mateus Reis from Sporting Lisbon.
Many began to call CSKA the favorite of the championship race. The only problem seemed to be Celestini's lack of experience in preparing the team for long winter training camps — there is not such a big break in Europe at this time of the year. In addition, in early January, the Swiss assistant Alexei Berezutsky, a long-time defender of the Army, who worked as their head coach in the 2021/22 season and successfully helped Nikolic, left the club.
The coaching staff began to consist almost entirely of Swiss compatriots who had no experience of such training camps. As a result, it quickly became clear in the spring that the team was not ready for the crucial part of the season. In the last ten rounds of the championship, CSKA has only two wins, three draws and five defeats. I quickly had to forget about the championship.
Another failure was the departure from the "RPL Path" of the Cup from Krasnodar. The first match at home was the best for the red-blues this spring and ended with a 3-1 victory. But the Bulls defeated the Army 4-0 away in the return game, and they could have scored more.
It turned out that the team was not physically ready. Players began to drop out en masse due to injuries. So, it recently became known that Moises and Igor Akinfeev, who are in the infirmary, will no longer play this season. Defender Matvey Lukin and midfielder Kirill Glebov were also injured.
They began to recall Celestini and the winter employment at the club of his wife Raquel, who became the manager of the analytical department of CSKA. Given that the leadership of the army fulfilled almost all the coach's wishes for reinforcement and powers, the demand for the result from him was fierce. And as a result, two days after the 1-3 home defeat by Zenit, the club fired the 51-year-old specialist.
Dmitry Igdisamov has been appointed acting director until the end of the season. He worked for many years in the CSKA system, first at the head of the youth teams, and in 2023 became the head coach of the youth team. Through him, the current foundation players Matvey Kislyak, Kirill Glebov, Matvey Lukin and Kirill Danilov, who gained a foothold in the squad this spring, grew up to the basics.
At the end of March, Igdisamov was transferred to Celestini's headquarters in the main team. And now the 39-year-old specialist will try to save the season for CSKA by winning the Cup. He will have to make the first step in the derby with Spartak on May 6.
"It's hard to say what didn't work out for Celestini,— former Spartak owner Andrei Chervichenko told Izvestia. — He started out great, but then everything went downhill. In any case, the questions are not only for him, but also for those who gave him such authority over the coaching staff, and now they have made him an extreme. Maybe the coach didn't find a common language with the team leaders, but they didn't help him. But it's obvious that CSKA has been playing toothlessly all spring. And I can't imagine how they can beat Spartak. Yes, it is clear that the club wants to shake up the team by changing the coach, but Spartak players look so much stronger than the army team this spring that it is unlikely that such changes will help in any way. Spartak is the favorite of this match, it surpasses CSKA in terms of composition, physical fitness, and due to its speed alone, it should confidently move on.
Krasnodar – Dynamo
Dynamo also failed to meet expectations in the championship, and even more so than Spartak and CSKA. Before the season, the team was led by Valery Karpin, who was allowed to combine work in the club and the Russian national team. The squad was seriously strengthened, but the blue and white finished the first round only in tenth place.
In November, Karpin resigned. Rolan Gusev, who had previously worked in this status, became acting Director. It was not possible to make significant progress in the championship, but Dynamo performed successfully in the Cup, passing Zenit.
In December, Gusev was confirmed as the head coach on a permanent basis. After the winter break, the team produced a strong March: three wins in four league matches and reaching the next round of the Cup after defeating Spartak." (5:2; 0:1).
However, in April, the results deteriorated again. Two rounds before the end of the RPL, Dynamo takes eighth place and has long been eliminated from the competition for medals. In these circumstances, the Cup becomes a top priority.
In the first match of the final of the "RPL Path", the blue and white drew with Krasnodar (0:0) and retained their chances of reaching the decisive stage. The club has not won this trophy since 1995.
The situation is different for Krasnodar: the team leads the championship and claims the second consecutive gold. In the last round, the Bulls beat Akron and retained first place, one point ahead of Zenit.
Interestingly, the rivals will meet twice in a short period of time. First, on May 7 in Krasnodar as part of the Cup, and then four days later they will play in the championship.
"We are as determined as possible to win the Russian Cup, as well as the championship,— Krasnodar defender Zhubal told Izvestia. — Both tournaments are important to us, and it's great that we manage to claim victory in both. We have matches against a good opponent ahead of us, the games will be difficult, but lately all our matches have been difficult, nevertheless we win them due to the character and quality of football, sometimes we score winning goals in the last minutes, so we believe that we can succeed in the remaining meetings of the season.
The Russian Cup Superfinal will be held on May 24 in Moscow at the Luzhniki Stadium.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
