Increased density, fierce struggle for medals and VAR in all games: what to expect from the spring part of the RPL

Lack of European competition and equal chances for medals

Before the resumption of the season in the Russian football championship, an extremely intriguing and confusing situation developed. If the title holder has almost resolved the issue (it is unlikely that Zenit will lose the ten-point advantage in 11 matches), then a serious fight will go for the remaining places.

Firstly, it is difficult to even guess who will take the second and third lines, which give the right to participate in the Champions League. At the same time, only in a season Russia will be represented in the main European competition by only two teams, which means that the RPL bronze for an indefinite time will lose additional value. Therefore, in the spring, Russian teams will get the last three of them to qualify for the Champions League. Silver, which is especially important, gives a direct pass to the group stage of the tournament.

Currently, Krasnodar is in second place with 35 points. Rostov, Lokomotiv and CSKA are located at a distance from the score. Other pursuers lag far behind, and it is difficult to believe that they will join the fight for medals and trips to European competitions.

The current owner of silver “Locomotive” in the winter was not strengthened by any player. Thus, Yuri Semin in the attack will be able to count in the spring only on Eder, since Fyodor Smolov went on loan to Celta.

“Krasnodar” left Ivan Ignatiev, but the young pupil of the club was not the main forward of the southerners. “Rostov” with CSKA, on the contrary, not only retained all the leaders, but also strengthened. So, Valery Karpin will finally be able to count on Pavel Mamaev in official matches. But the army team still managed to find an assistant for Fedor Chalov and acquired the best scorer of the championship of Belarus Ilya Shkurin.

Even more equalizes the initial data of the rivals, the absence of the need to break into several fronts, since in the European Cup spring none of the Russian teams made their way. All of them will be in equal conditions, and only CSKA will have to be distracted by the Cup of Russia, the remaining applicants for medals have already left it.

The battle for a potential ticket to the European competition

Returning to the talk about the standings: it will be incredibly difficult to break into the top five for the pursuers. However, they will lead among themselves the struggle for the sixth place, which could potentially become an entrance to the Europa League. This will happen if the holder of the Cup of Russia already has a ticket to European competition.

This is precisely the situation that developed in the previous two seasons, when the sixth-placed Ufa and Arsenal got the opportunity to debut on the international stage. At the moment, the sixth place is just shared by these two teams. In total, Dynamo and Ural are behind them by a point, and Spartak by three.

At the same time, an unprecedented density is observed in the second half of the standings: only six points separate the 15th place from the sixth, that is, two victories can raise from the bottom to the fight for European cups.

Somewhat unexpectedly, in this group of teams there are venerable Dynamo with Spartak. It’s almost impossible to join the struggle for medals in the capital’s giants, but only three points separate the national team from the relegation zone.

In the end, the fans will be curious to see how red-white and blue-white will look after full training under the guidance of new coaches who took up their posts in the fall - Domenico Tedesco and Kirill Novikov, respectively.

Of no less interest is the game of Rubin, which after 19 rounds is located in the zone of transitional matches. However, in winter, Kazan did not only manage to find arguments for Leonid Slutsky to return to Russia, but also conducted a large-scale transfer campaign. For example, the team player Ignatiev already mentioned became. And from “Spartak” Zelimkhan Bakayev’s brother Soltmurad got over.

Other outsiders are not going to give up. For example, Sochi, which occupies the last place, not only lured coach Vladimir Fedotov from Orenburg, but also marked two, perhaps, the loudest winter transfers in the country. Alexander Kokorin moved from Zenit to the south of Russia, and Frenchman Adil Rami moved from the Turkish championship. He became the fourth world champion in the RPL after Roberto Carlos, Benedict Höwedes and Andre Schurrle.

Thus, the Russian fans are surely waiting for the exciting spring part of the season, in which most of the questions will remain unresolved until the last round. To suggest which of the teams will eventually go to the Champions League and which to the FNL is decidedly impossible.

An additional intrigue will be made by the work of VAR in absolutely all matches. Around the system, which operated in the fall in a limited mode, there were already a lot of scandals. So, in the spring there will be more of them, and the new head of the domestic football refereeing Viktor Kashshai will have to keep an answer from the first days of his stay in Russia.