In the eighth round of the RPL, Rubin will play with Zenit, and before the meeting with the current Russian champion, coach Rashid Rakhimov received a powerful reinforcement, at least in terms of the number of players: six newcomers were signed to the time. ! Furthermore, the Club announced the transfers of five of them only on September 14, that is, just before the closing of the summer window. For some reason, in Kazan they waited until the last day to assemble a combat-ready team and compete in the elite. As a result, Rubin, who left 6.81 million euros on the market, entered RPL’s top 5 in terms of spending. Even Zenit coach Sergei Semak highlighted the rival’s recent acquisitions:
“Rookies from the Kazan team? They are good and quality players. But how ready they are to play right away is a question for the Rubin coaching staff. We know some of them.”
Semak, of course, did not forget how he suffered for one of Rubin’s newcomers. We talked about who came to Rakhimov’s team.
Egor Sorokin
Egor Sorokin
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The former Krasnodar player is the only newcomer in this group signed a week before the summer window closed. Egor returned to Rubin, where he already played until 2019. Kazan statistically has the worst defense in the RPL (15 goals conceded), so they needed a central defender like Sorokin.
More than four years ago, a native of St. Petersburg became the hero of the match between Rubin and Zenit at the Gazprom Arena, scoring a winning double against Semak’s team. After that match there was a lot of talk about Sorokin’s possible move to Zenit, but it didn’t work out and six months later the defender was sold to Krasnodar.
In Krasnodar, Egor, in general, did not take root; It all ended with exile to the agricultural club. Maybe he just picked the wrong team. It is one thing to play with three central defenders with a fairly deep defense for Kurban Berdyev, and quite another to play with four, in the more offensive Krasnodar. There, deficiencies, including his speed qualities, began to outweigh Sorokin’s advantages. The return to Rubin (Rakhimov, by the way, also plays with three defenders) is a good opportunity for the former Russian national team candidate to restart his career and will be very useful in set pieces.
Uros Drezgic
Uros Drezgic
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Another central defender who can reinforce Rubin’s defense is 20-year-old Drezgic. He is a footballer from the Serbian youth team, which means that he is a player with potential. So far he has only played in his home country for the Cukarichki club and has scored three goals in 45 first division games.
This season Drezgic managed to play in European competitions. “Cukarichki” lost to the Greek “Olympiacos” in the overall Europa League qualification (1:3 away and 0:3 at home) and advanced to the group stage of the Conference League. Urosh himself flew to Kazan and was sold for 1.5 million euros.
After the first six rounds of the Serbian championship, Drezgic was the best on the team in interceptions (8), clearances (11) and accurate long passes (29), and won 60% of the duels. In general, the boy has the strong points about him. But RPL is a completely different level, adaptation will be necessary.
Nikola Cumic
Nikola Cumic
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The second Serb in the group of newcomers to Rubin is Chumic, 24 years old. He plays in the winger and pure forward positions, coming from Vojvodina for 1.5 million euros. His team also played in European competitions in the summer. In the qualification for the conference league, Vojvodina lost to the Cypriot APOEL (1:2 away and 1:2 at home). Nikola wore the captain’s armband and provided assists in every game, but his effort was not enough. He will now help Rubin get out of the relegation zone.
Chumich played 41 matches for Vojvodina, scoring 16+7. In the last championship he became the team’s top scorer. In the new season, after six rounds, Nikola was first in Vojvodina in number of shots (14) and hits (8), fouls committed (14), second in successful dribbles (7) and duels won (28). ). It is not surprising that he did not remain in the Serbian national team for long.
This year Chumich was called up to the first team. However, Nikola’s transfer can be confused by the fact that he already had not very successful attempts to play outside Serbia, at Olympiacos, Sporting Gijon and Swiss Lucerne.
Lazar Randjelovic
Lazar Randjelovic
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Randjelovic is also Serbian, but much more famous in Russia. Last season Lazar played in the RPL: he played 18 games for Ural, scored three goals and gave four assists. I remember him for his good service on set pieces. This is already one of Rubin’s trump cards, and now with Sorokin and Randjelovic, any Kazan corner will be even more dangerous.
At the end of last season, Lazar left the Yekaterinburg team. There were rumors that his relationship with Viktor Goncharenko had worsened. The Urals coach himself explained Randjelovic’s transfer to the reserves:
“The fact is that we received a document from Olympiacos and they took it away from us… One way or another, in this situation, the players begin to take care of themselves, they get less involved in fights and single combats. That’s why we rebuilt the formation, because it was more comfortable for us to play with two forwards, without lateral midfielders. His contribution in the fall games was very great, but in the spring, especially when he found out that he was leaving, the level of play dropped. “He understood my decision, there were no hard feelings.”
Ural did not buy Randjelovic after the loan, but Rubin paid 1 million euros and took the winger from Olympiacos.
Valentin Vada
Valentin Vada
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Argentine Wada, 27, is a central midfielder with extensive experience playing in Europe. He was in the French clubs Bordeaux and Saint-Etienne (79 games in Ligue 1), in the Spanish clubs Almería, Tenerife and Zaragoza (130 games in the Second Division). He moved to Rubin as a free agent.
Last season, Valentín played 37 games in the Spanish second division, scoring four goals and giving three assists. As a general rule, he started for Zaragoza 24 times. He became second on the team in number of passes attacked (39), fourth in accurate passes in the opposite third of the field (203) and shots on goal (13). And in terms of missed scoring chances, third (6).
Evidently, Rakhimov is counting on Vada to improve Rubin’s ball progression. It is unknown how valuable the Argentine will be when he plays without the ball. Last season, Segunda won only 38% of the fights and committed many fouls (40 times).
Egor Shamov
Egor Shamov
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Before the match against Zenit, Rubin hired a competitor for its goalkeepers – Yuri Dupin and Nikita Yanovich. The new goalkeeper for the Kazan team was Shamov, 29, who signed as a free agent from Arsenal. The contract with Yegor was signed only until the end of this season. It’s like a trial period.
Shamov may not be the most famous figure, but he is still a goalkeeper with experience playing in the RPL. He played 30 games for Arsenal, in which he conceded 46 goals and kept nine clean sheets. It is true that last season in the Tula team he remained on the bench more often than he played. He played only 11 games in the First League. 18 goals were scored.
Four years ago, after Zenit’s match against Arsenal (1-0), Semak already said the name of this goalkeeper. “Shamov played brilliantly, he took the ball that couldn’t be taken,” the coach marveled, commenting on the episode of the missed scoring opportunity. Maybe on this tour Egor will give a reason to talk about himself?
