A double-edged sword: why the departure of Rostov and Dynamo from the Europa League is not the collapse of Russian football

Heavy calendar and difficult qualification format

The new European Cup season started very badly for Russia.

In the Champions League and Europa League, even the group stage has not begun, and the country has already lost two representatives.

Dynamo sensationally lost on the road to Lokomotiv Tbilisi, and Rostov lost to Israeli Maccabi from Haifa.

These results gave the fans and experts a reason to start talking about the coming crisis of domestic football.

However, upon closer inspection, things don't look so hopeless.

First, Russia loses teams in the early qualifying stages of European competition almost every year.

For example, last season Tula's Arsenal, which made their debut in the Europa League, stopped their first rival, Azerbaijan's Neftchi, while Spartak could not reach the group stage of the tournament, losing to Braga.

In 2018, one step away from getting into the group round, the LE completed its performances on the international arena Ufa.

A year earlier, Krasnodar was defeated in the qualifying round.

And in 2014, Lokomotiv and Rostov suffered a setback at once, losing to Apollo and Trabzonspor in two-masted confrontations.

The current season, despite the disastrous start, can still be successful for the country.

Russia has a chance for the first time in history to be represented by three teams in the group stage of the Champions League.

Zenit and Lokomotiv were selected there directly, while Krasnodar beat PAOK 2: 1 in the first match of the play-off round of the selection of the main European Cup.

The successful performance of domestic teams in the Champions League will certainly make the fans forget about the defeats of Dynamo and Rostov.

And CSKA, which may be the only representative of the country in the group stage of the UEL, will be in the first basket during the draw, which means it will get comfortable opponents and a chance to earn the maximum possible number of points.

At the same time, the qualification of European competitions this season is markedly different from the previous ones.

From the earliest qualifying rounds, such strong teams as Tottenham, Milan, Granada, Wolfsburg entered the fight.

All of them have experienced problems in confrontation with inferior rivals in the class.

For example, the Londoners were inferior to the Bulgarian Lokomotiv until the 80th minute, and in the next round they allowed the Macedonian Shkendia to hold a draw for a long time.

In turn, Milan conceded first in the game against the Norwegian Bodø-Glimt and achieved only a minimal advantage (3: 2).

Additional unpredictability of the meetings was given by the one-match format of the confrontations in qualifying, as well as the lack of spectators in the stands.

Such conditions equalize the teams' chances, and teams inferior in the class get a chance to make a sensation.

Thus, KI Klaksvik, representing the Faroe Islands, made it to the playoffs of the LE qualification.

Celtic barely passed the modest Riga, scoring the winning goal in the 90th minute.

And the French "Reims" in the penalty shootout lost to the Hungarian "Fehervar".

To some extent, Rostov and Dynamo also fell victim to the new format.

Obviously, the Russian teams would have a good chance of final success if they had the opportunity to correct the situation in the return matches.

At the same time, the domestic teams found themselves in obviously unfavorable conditions in comparison with their rivals.

Since the resumption of last season, they have played 16 matches in the national championship with a minimum pause between seasons.

Maccabi from Haifa, in turn, played 12 meetings and got a break of almost two months (from July 7 to August 30).

“Rostov” not only regularly took to the field, but also had to quarantine for two weeks due to the outbreak of coronavirus.

And in the match with Maccabi the worst physical condition of the team was striking.

By the way, there was not enough strength to end the meeting with PAOK and Krasnodar.  

Natural fall and failure in the early 2000s

Nevertheless, even current local failures should not be pessimistic.

All non-elite countries (which include Spain, England, Germany, Italy, France), with an increase in the number of quotas in European competition, over time lose their positions in the UEFA coefficient table due to a lack of strong clubs and the inability to protect previously scored points.

The example of Portugal is indicative, which, after taking off to fifth position, dropped to seventh.

Apart from Porto, Benfica, Sporting and Braga, no one is able to adequately represent the country in the international arena.

Russia has a sufficient number of strong teams.

So, according to the results of the last season, Spartak did not make it to the European cups, which, after eight rounds in the current championship of the country, shares the leadership in the RPL standings with Zenit.

Rubin under the leadership of Leonid Slutskiy, who beat Dynamo at the start of the season, also plays in the domestic arena.

It is also premature to say that domestic football has sunk to the bottom, also because at the beginning of the 2000s, Russia was in the UEFA coefficient table much lower.

Then Spartak got into a serious crisis, and CSKA Moscow with Lokomotiv and Zenit had not yet gained power.

As a result, according to the results of the 2003/04 season, the Premier League was in 21st place.

For two years, Russia had the right to represent only one team in the Champions League, and even then it began its journey in the main European Cup from the second qualifying round.

The apotheosis of the fall was 2005.

Then the group stage of the Champions League was held without Russian representatives at all, as Lokomotiv lost to the Austrian Rapid in the third qualifying round.

But the deep plunge was followed by a surge with two UEFA Cup victories and a UEFA Super Cup triumph.

The crisis of coaching ideas and the disastrous limit on legionnaires 

However, Rostov's defeats with Dynamo forced the search for more global reasons for the failures.

One of them is the crisis of ideas among Russian coaches.

Under the guidance of domestic specialists, the clubs have not achieved serious success in European competitions for a long time.

For example, last season not a single team made it to the spring stage of the Champions League and LE.

All of them were headed by coaches from the post-Soviet space: Sergei Semak (Zenit), Yuri Semin (Lokomotiv), Murad Musaev (Krasnodar), Oleg Kononov (Spartak), Viktor Goncharenko (CSKA) and Igor Cherevchenko ( Arsenal").

This season, Russians are also working with teams representing the country in Europe, with the exception of Goncharenko and Marko Nikolic.

But "Rostov" under the leadership of one of the most promising specialists in Russia Valery Karpin outright lost to "Maccabi".

Opposed to him was Barak Bahar, who by 41 became the champion of Israel three times.

The 51-year-old Karpin has zero trophies.

Fewer questions arise for Dynamo's helmsman Kirill Novikov, who made his debut in European competitions at the age of 39.

However, the sensational defeat by Lokomotiv became largely coaching, since the young specialist did not decide how to hack the team's defense, whose cost is 15 times lower than the cost of the blue-and-white players (€ 3.83 million versus € 59.48).

In recent years, Russian football has lacked not only strong coaches, but also fresh ideas.

Domestic teams often rely on defense in European competitions and achieve success only thanks to such tactics, although even the teams representing the average European championships are not shy to act first.

In this regard, the RPL can be helped by the arrival of high-quality foreign specialists.

It was they who often not only helped Russian football to progress, but also passed on invaluable experience to young domestic colleagues.

So, Sergei Semak twice led Zenit to the championship, passing the school of Guus Hiddink, Luciano Spalletti and Andre-Villas Boas.

Negatively affects the performance of Russian teams in European competitions and the limit on foreign players, which puts them in an unequal position with their rivals in advance.

Semak openly called the current restrictions "evil" and said that they "do not help our football to develop."

By the way, Russian clubs achieved their first serious successes in European competitions in the 2000s with virtually no limit.

In 2005, CSKA won the UEFA Cup, and the team included many young Russians (brothers Berezutsky, Sergei Ignashevich, Igor Akinfeev, Yuri Zhirkov).

In 2008, when Zenit won the UEFA Cup and Super Cup, seven foreigners were allowed to play in the Premier League.

Moreover, their number in the application was not limited in any way.

But with the tightening of the limit (no more than six foreign players in the squad), Russia spent two not the strongest seasons in European competitions (9,750 points in the 2008/09 season and 6,166 in the 2009/10 season), although CSKA entered Champions League quarterfinals.

In 2012, restrictions were eased again, and Russian clubs had a number of strong seasons.

In particular, in 2013 three teams reached the 1/8 finals of the LE.

A year later, three national teams also entered the spring part of the European cups, as in 2016.

And in 2017, Russia managed to climb to sixth place in the UEFA coefficient table.

The last two unsuccessful seasons fell on the old version of the limit (6 + 5).

Since the current national championship, it has been tightened even more.

Now eight legionnaires can enter the field in RPL matches at the same time, but there cannot be more of them in the application.