Attention restart: what to expect from the second part of the RPL season

The Russian Football Championship draw will resume on February 28 in Makhachkala. The local Dynamo will host the Moscow Lokomotiv. Seven more matches of the upcoming 19th round will be held on the weekend in the first days of spring. The winter break in the season lasted from December 8th. In the remaining 12 rounds, the audience will face a difficult struggle both for the first places, where five clubs are competing for leadership at once, and at the bottom of the standings, where even the 10th place out of 16 does not guarantee the preservation of registration in the Premier League.

Tops

In the first part of the championship, Krasnodar was able to impose a struggle on Zenit St. Petersburg, which seemed to be the eternal champion. As a result, both teams went into the break as leaders with an equal number of points scored. In winter, the southern club did not take advantage of the opportunity to strengthen the squad without making a single transfer. Thus, the Bulls will try to achieve their goal with the same selection of players that played from July to December.

A year ago, they were already fighting for the championship and also started the spring as leaders. Even in the last round, they kept their chances for gold, but Zenit was able to snatch the final first place. This winter, he lost his wingback Vyacheslav Karavaev due to a cruciate ligament injury. In the same position on the right, Sergei Volkov was eliminated at the beginning of the season due to a similar injury. The club could not find a replacement for a long time and only in the last days of February leased Serbian Ognjen Mimovic from Turkish Fenerbahce.

Zenit also acquired Serbian midfielder Sasha Zdelar from CSKA at the last moment. The main transfer was the transfer of Brazilian midfielder Luis Enrique from Botafogo. According to media reports, it cost the blue-white-blues more than €30 million.

Spartak Moscow is two points behind the two leaders, who challenged Zenit in terms of transfer spending this winter. The Red and white have never bought a player for more than €18 million, but according to rumors, that's how much they paid for Trinidad's Levi Garcia from Greek AEK. The red and white also took the Argentine striker Pablo Solari for €10 million from River Plate.

— Zenit and Spartak have made powerful transfers, but it's hard to say how they will affect the fight for the championship, — former Spartak midfielder Alexander Mostovoy shared his opinion with Izvestia. — Still, it's not enough to acquire good players — it's important that they adapt to the teams, to the championship. Let's say Zdelar knows what RPL is, but he just joined Zenit the other day and hasn't really trained with his new partners yet. And the rest of the newcomers from St. Petersburg and Spartak may even encounter our cold weather and snow for the first time in March. And who knows how long they will get used to it, whereas there are only 12 rounds left before the finish, and any delay can lead to the separation of Krasnodar, which may be doing the right thing by relying on the stability of the squad.

Dynamo Moscow and Lokomotiv are four points behind the leaders and two behind Spartak. The Blue and White team recently acquired one of the best midfielders in the country, the long-term leader of Rostov, Danil Glebov. The Railwaymen were passive in the transfer market. CSKA Moscow is four points behind them, which has already been written off by many, but a number of experts do not rule out that the army will still join the race for medals.

— I think that six teams can compete for gold," Dmitry Bulykin, a former Dynamo and Lokomotiv striker, said in a conversation with Izvestia. — Even CSKA should not be written off — its head coach Marko Nikolic is able to prepare the team well for a big breakthrough over the winter, as he once did at Loko. As for Dynamo, the team almost became champions last season, missing out on gold only in the last round, and now they will surely do everything to finally get to the coveted trophy. And Glebov's transfer should be a good reinforcement. Loko performed well in the first part of the season, having been among the leaders for a long time with the young guys in the squad. Then they slowed down a bit, but they had to prepare well over the winter and, if they had new experience, they could shoot again in the spring. So these teams, along with Krasnodar, Zenit and Spartak, are capable of success. And there is a good chance that we will see the fight for gold again before the very last round.

The middle

If CSKA succeeds in rushing to the leaders, then two teams will find themselves in the so—called swamp - Rostov and Kazan Rubin. Both teams are five points behind the Army team and ten points ahead of the transition zone. That is, they do not get medals, but they are not in danger of relegation either. Akron Togliatti, which is four points behind the top eight, may soon join them.

The main shock to the public was the personnel changes at Rostov. And if many people were ready for Glebov's departure a long time ago, the midfielder of the Russian national team on the Don sat out too much, then the departure of the head coach of the team Valery Karpin three days before the resumption of the championship shocked most fans.

Karpin has been coaching Rostov since December 2017. He left the club in July 2021, when he took over the Russian national team, but returned in March 2022 to combine his work with the national team, which by that time had been suspended from official competitions.

Now Valery Georgievich has left, citing the need to focus on the national team. His Spanish assistant Jonathan Alba will now lead the Rostov team.

—I don't think Karpin's departure will have a global impact on the team," Sergei Balakhnin, former Rostov head coach, told Izvestia. — It is clear that there is nothing good in this, too much has been tied to the head coach, who has worked at the club for so many years. And Glebov's departure cannot pass without a trace. So it will be worse, but not so much that there is a threat of departure. The points scored by Rostov residents are too big. Therefore, they will balance at the level of seventh or tenth places, but without any upward jerks or sharp downward collapses.

Bottoms

According to the regulations, the 15th and 16th RPL teams will be directly relegated to the first league. The 13th and 14th will play transitional matches with the 3rd and 4th teams of the first league. As of today, Orenburg can be called an unambiguous outsider. He is in last place and is six points behind the transition zone.

But just above, the situation is confusing. The penultimate Grozny Akhmat is only five points behind the tenth Samara Wings of the Soviets.

Samaritans experienced turbulence in the fall due to attempts by some agency groups to arrange the dismissal of the team's head coach Igor Osinkin. As a result, Vyacheslav Fedorishchev, the governor of the Samara region, supported him, but since November he himself has become the main newsmaker of all Russian football.

The head of the region made a number of high-profile statements about how one of the club's employees asked him for 32 million rubles to pay for the services of an intermediary influencing the judiciary. Then he criticized the decision of his predecessors to give Osinkin a large salary. He spread the practice of agents influencing the recruitment of the team, openly declaring war on the informal curator of the Wings, agent Pavel Andreev.

In February, the media reported that Samara security forces conducted a series of interrogations of agents associated with Andreev, as well as conducted searches in their offices. Interestingly, against this background, there were rumors about Osinkin's desire to leave his post, but in the end he was retained. And the Samaritans managed to score a number of bright victories, including away against Zenit (3:2).

Due to this, they rose to a fairly high tenth place. Behind them, apart from Akhmat, there are also Dynamo Makhachkala, Pari Nizhny Novgorod, Khimki and Fakel Voronezh.

Khimki is experiencing financial problems. There were even rumors that they might not finish the championship, but so far this has been avoided. Their difficulties arose after the detention of the club's investor Tufan Sadygov, who was released on bail from house arrest in January. Earlier, he was charged with fraud on a particularly large scale.

— Perhaps we can say that Orenburg is the first candidate for departure, this is obvious based on how it lagged behind the others, — said Sergey Balakhnin. — Although he can not be completely written off. But otherwise, there will be a very unpredictable struggle for survival, where any misfire from one of the competitors can bring him down.

The Russian Championship will be held until May 24 inclusive, after which transitional matches will take place.