After a not-too-brilliant start to the season, the “blue-white-blue” are slowly improving. As you can see, the team recovered from the loss of Brazilian Malcolm, and the departure of Daler Kuzyaev did not become an insoluble problem for the St. Petersburg team. During the two-week break for national team matches, Zenit reinforced the squad with Izidor, who took the number ten, under which Malcom played. The Frenchman immediately found a place in the team and did not disappoint, scoring for the new club in his debut match.
The Saint Petersburg team won the fourth game of the last five in the Premier League
After winning the fourth of the last five Premier League games, Zenit reduced the difference with the leader Krasnodar to one point: 17 against 18. Despite another three points, the coach of the blue and white, Sergei Semak, found flaws in their game defenses.
– It doesn’t happen that everything turns out well. Any trip to the Premier League is difficult enough. Today we started well, but in the second half of the first half there were many losses. In principle we played good football, but Rubin gave us a lot of problems on set pieces,” said Semak.
According to Kazan coach Rashid Rakhimov, his team lacked class: “The guests showed that they are superior to us in class. They made fewer mistakes, controlled the ball better, their level of technical equipment was different. In general, if we take into account Throughout the match, “We took advantage of every opportunity. Unfortunately, we do not take our opportunities to their logical conclusion. In any case, we must understand one thing: today Rubin played against a team with a higher level of skill.”
Spartak broke a bad streak of four games in a row without winning. The red and white defeated Sochi at home (1-0) thanks to the goal of Serbian Srdjan Babic in the 91st minute. It is important to note that the guests finished the match at a disadvantage due to the injury of Slovenian defender Vanja Drkusic. At that point, the South coaching staff had made all five changes, so there was no one to replace Drkusic.
By the way, the match against Spartak was the last for Dmitry Khokhlov at the head of Sochi. The day after this fight, Khokhlov was fired. Alexander Tochilin will prepare the team for the upcoming matches.
Finally, in the last match of the tour, Lokomotiv Moscow unexpectedly lost at home to Orenburg with a score of 0:2. The visitors scored both goals in the end: Bosnian Ivan Basic (85th minute) and substitute Dmitry Vorobiev scored. Thus, the “railway workers” lost the opportunity to catch up with “Krylia Sovetov” and “Dynamo”, who have 15 points each. For its part, Orenburg rose to 11th place.
