Clever sale: how Rostov earned more than € 18 million on transfers and did not get weaker

Sale after departure from European competition

The departure of the leaders of Rostov has become one of the main events of the new season in the RPL.

In the summer and autumn, 11 players left the club, on the sale of which the yellow-blues earned € 18.25 million. For their players, the southerners managed to help out the most in the Premier League during the current transfer window.

In second place is Lokomotiv, which sold Alexei Miranchuk to Atalanta for € 14.5 million, and Ufa, whose transfers attracted € 8 million, are in third place.

At the same time, for Eldor Shomurodov (€ 7.5 million), Aleksey Ionov (€ 3.5 million), Evgeny Chernov (€ 3 million), Baktiyor Zainutdinov (€ 2 million), Alexander Zuev (€ 1.5 million), Anton Saletros (€ 350 thousand) and the lease of Dmitry Chistyakov at Zenit (€ 400 thousand), the southerners gained more than ten times more funds than they spent at one time on their acquisition.

It was not possible to earn money only on Saletros, which was purchased from the Swedish AIK for € 600 thousand in 2018. But Ionov, Chernov, Zainutdinov and Chistyakov came to the team for free or for minimal money.

The example of Shomurodov is especially indicative.

For a talented native of Uzbekistan, the yellow-blues paid only € 300 thousand in 2017, and three years later they let him go to the Italian Genoa for € 7.5 million.

However, the successful transfer campaign somehow caused conflicting feelings among the fans, because the team at once lost several players at once who determined its game.

And the loss of the leaders can have the most negative effect on the results of the team, as happened with Ufa in the new season.

Perhaps the scale of the sale would not have been so large if it had not been for Rostov's failure in the Europa League.

Valery Karpin's wards were defeated in the first qualifying round and finished their performance in the tournament.

Thus, the club lost the opportunity to earn money from performing in European competitions and decided not to keep those who wanted to go for promotion.

And many of them left the team on time.

For example, Shomurodov, after a successful first half of last season, practically stopped scoring.

In 2020, the Uzbek scored only two goals, Akhmatu in the RPL and Maccabi in the Europa League.

However, “Genoa” was not afraid to pay serious money for the player who dropped the player, and “Rostov” did not repeat the mistakes of CSKA, which in 2019 did not let Fyodor Chalov go to Crystal Palace, after which he began to hit other people's goals less often.

The same amount as for Shomurodov (€ 7.5 million), the yellow-blue managed to bail out for Chernov and Ionov, who moved to Krasnodar.

Considering that at one time both came to Rostov free of charge, these deals can also be called successful.

This is especially true of the Russian national team midfielder, who will turn 33 in February.

We can say that Sergey Galitsky's club in this situation overpaid for football players with passports, especially in the context of the coronavirus pandemic.

Obviously, Karpin did not count on Zuev, who spent the last year on loan at Rubin, and eventually moved to Kazan on a full-fledged basis.

Well, the club may still be able to make money on Chistyakov, if Zenit decides to buy his transfer after the end of the lease.

Transfers for the future

However, in the current transfer window, Rostov is not only actively selling players, but also buying them.

At the same time, the club still rely on young talented performers who can bring money in the future.

In particular, 19-year-old forward from North Macedonia David Toshevski was one of the first to join the team in the summer.

And the slightly more experienced Japanese Kento Hashimoto, acquired from Tokyo for € 800,000, has already begun to benefit the team.

In eight RPL matches, he scored four goals and is currently the top scorer of Rostov.   

The main assets in the coming years may be two young Swedes who moved to Rostov on Thursday - Pontus Almqvist and Armin Gigovich.

For the 21-year-old striker Almqvist, the domestic club did not spare € 3.75 million.

At home, Pontus is considered a real talent.

In the current season of the Swedish championship, he recorded five goals and two assists for Norrköping.

And in September, the forward made his debut in the youth team and scored a double in a meeting with Italy.

At the same time, Almqvist is versatile and capable of playing not only in the attack, but also on both flanks.

Even younger is Gigovich, who only turned 18 in April.

Nevertheless, the defensive midfielder made his debut for the Swedish Helsingborg last year and quickly became the main player of the team.

As a result, the club earned € 1.5 million from its sale. And as part of the youth team, Armin took part in the European Championship-2019 (U-17).

It is possible that in the future he will become a replacement for Matthias Norman.  

Updated core of Karpin's team

In the meantime, for "Rostov" a huge plus was the fact that the Norwegian did not leave Russia.

According to media reports, English Fulham was seriously interested in the football player.

It cannot be ruled out that the top RPL clubs are also interested in acquiring a defensive midfielder, whom Transfermarkt estimates at € 7.5 million. By the way, CSKA and Spartak just lack a performer of such a formation.

At the same time, in "Rostov" Norman performs not only the functions of a destroyer, but also begins attacks of the yellow-blue with competent transmissions.

In the games against Sochi and Maccabi, Matias scored two amazing assists.

Thus, the whole game of Karpin's team in the center of the field is built around the Norwegian.

However, the club as a whole managed to retain most of the key performers.

The composition of the goalkeeper's brigade has not changed.

The duo of central defenders, as before, will be Maxim Osipenko and Dennis Hadzhikadunich.

They can be replaced by the Belarusian newcomer Alexander Pavlovets.

Experienced Alexey Kozlov will continue to operate on the right flank of the defense.

On the left, Nikolay Poyarkov, Arseny Logashov and Denis Terentyev, who came from Zenit, can play.

In the center of the field, “Rostov” will continue to stake, in addition to Norman, on the long-time made names of Pavel Mamaev and Roman Eremenko, as well as the aforementioned newcomer Hashimoto.

Khoren Bayramyan, who is on the left flank, also remained in the team.

But on the opposite edge, the universal Almqvist and Dmitry Poloz may appear.

However, the 29-year-old Russian started his last match with Rostov with Sochi (2: 4) on the edge of the attack and even scored a goal.

In addition to him, Toshevski is ready to play in the attack, Vladimir Obukhov, who came from Tambov, Alexander Dolgov and Almkvist.

Thus, Karpin, even having lost 11 people, retained the skeleton of the old team, adding new young performers to it.

Of course, they will need time to adapt, and the yellow-blue ones during the current season may misfire.

However, in the future, this team can become stronger than the previous one.