The beginning of the summer period for additional applications in 2021 in the RPL was remembered not for large transactions to attract star legionnaires to the league and not for transfers of famous Russian football players within the championship. The main events were unexpectedly the departure of several performers at once to foreign top leagues. And we are talking not only about mature players of the caliber of Andrei Lunev, but also about young talents - Nikita Iosifov and Yaroslav Mikhailov, who decided to try their hand in Europe.
On Tuesday evening it became known that 18-year-old attacking midfielder Zenit Mikhailov will go on loan at Schalke until the end of the season. True, Yaroslav will not be able to try his hand at confrontations with the strongest teams in Germany. According to the results of the last championship, the Gelsenkirchen team took the last, 18th place in the standings of the German championship and flew to the second Bundesliga. The last time this happened to them was in 1990.
In general, Mikhailov's transfer to the camp of the seven-time champion of Germany, although it can be called sensational, is only partially.
Firstly, Zenit and Schalke have long been uniting partnerships, because both are sponsored by Gazprom.
An agreement between the oil company and the German club was signed in October 2006, and a few months later the teams played a friendly match in a crowded stadium in Gelsenkirchen.
For more than ten years, such actions have not been held, but over the past three years the teams have played with each other twice.
In 2018, the meeting at the Gazprom Arena gathered more than 41 thousand spectators in the stands, and in July 2021 they crossed paths at a training camp in Austria.
Therefore, it is not surprising that at one point the friendship was reinforced by an invitation to a kind of internship of one of the footballers.
It is hardly possible to call this transition any other way.
Until now, Mikhailov has never entered the field as part of the adult Zenit team, and last season he was balancing between performances in the UFL-1 (Youth Football League) and the Youth Championship of Russia.
In total, he spent 25 meetings and scored one goal and four assists.
Quite modest figures for a representative of his role.
In Schalke, this position is played by Amin Harit, estimated by Transfermarkt at € 10 million, so there is practically no chance of getting into the base.
However, you should not underestimate the benefits of this trip.
A six-month lease to a European club should help Yaroslav mature and gain experience that others can only dream of.
Against the background of Mikhailov's lease, the situation around Nikita Iosifov seems much more interesting and unusual. In March, it was reported that representatives of the midfielder were negotiating a new contract with Lokomotiv, but could not come to an agreement. According to Metaratings, the father of the 20-year-old athlete demanded a lift in the amount of 50 million rubles and a one and a half year agreement with a salary of € 300 thousand per year. At the same time, the offer of the railway workers was more modest in terms of money (25 million rubles and € 200 thousand, respectively), and the contract was designed for three years.
As a result, the parties failed to find a compromise, so Iosifov was temporarily left without a club. Given the limit on foreign players, there was almost no doubt that he would continue his career in Russia, but instead the midfielder joined Villarreal's roster. And there is every reason to believe that Nikita did not do this for the sake of money. According to Soccer Prime, even in the adult team of the current Europa League winner there is a footballer whose salary is less than € 300,000 per year. We are talking about the Moroccan defender Sofiana Shakla, earning just over € 158 thousand. It is extremely difficult to imagine that the “yellow submarine” would agree to pay twice as much to the representative of the double as to the base player.
In this regard, the transitions of Iosifov and Lunev are very similar. The goalkeeper could either stay at Zenit on fairly favorable terms, or move to another RPL club, but in the end he chose Bayer. And we can assume that for the sake of the opportunity to play for the German team, he also decided to go for a salary cut. According to media reports, in St. Petersburg, he earned about € 1.2 million a year, and in Leverkusen he will receive less. And this is without taking into account the fact that in the camp of the current champion of Russia he would probably remain the first number, while now he will have to withstand tough competition with the main goalkeeper of the Finnish national team Lukas Gradecki.
In general, the moves of Lunev and Iosifov may well speak of an emerging trend in Russian football. Domestic players are increasingly starting to look abroad, and we are mainly talking about either very young athletes, or about those who are gradually approaching the final stage of their careers. Already in November, Lunev will celebrate his 30th birthday - therefore, in the future he will be able to count on a maximum of one long-term contract (three years or more).
In recent years, several more Russians have followed the same route, with representatives of both the first and second categories meeting. Speaking of the young, one can recall the pupil of Zenit Vladislav Molchan, who went in transit through the Yenisei to the French Can. In 2017, right winger Edgar Sevikyan from the Lokomotiv academy went to conquer Levante, and even earlier goalkeepers Ivan Zlobin and Anton Mitryushkin decided to try their hand at Austria and Portugal, respectively.
As for experienced football players, the examples of Fedor Kudryashov and Stanislav Kritsyuk are indicative. The defender left the RPL for the first time at the age of 32 and spent two seasons in Turkey. The goalkeeper went to Portugal at the age of 22, and made the second run at less than 30. But not to say that the former guard of Krasnodar's gates was very successful. In the previous season, he defended the colors of the middle peasant championship - "Belenenses", and this year he will represent a team of a similar level - "Zhil Vicente".
Why do football players of these age groups go abroad? The first - in the hope of gaining useful experience, status and attracting the attention of strong Russian or foreign teams, and the second - to try their hand in Europe before leaving the sport. It is important that both types of players are not burdened with large contracts. The former could not have time to sign it due to not the best results in their youth or lost competition, the latter due to instability or approaching the final stage of their careers.
By and large, churn is indicative of two things. Firstly, RPL clubs are experiencing serious financial problems, so even the championship leaders cannot or do not consider it expedient to offer their players improved conditions. In particular, this is evidenced by the situation with Lunev, who could defend the colors of Zenit. Andrey is one of the strongest goalkeepers in the country, and he has the opportunity to remain in this status for many years to come. However, Petersburgers did not want to satisfy his requirements and pay € 1.5 million a year - more than the average money for blue-white-blue.
Besides Zenit, hardly anyone was able to satisfy Lunev's requests. Theoretically, Spartak, Lokomotiv and CSKA could pay him a similar salary, but all three of them have solid first numbers and do not need to strengthen this position. Strong performers also have Krasnodar, Dynamo and Rubin, and for the rest the goalkeeper's salary would be unaffordable. Hence the lack of an alternative and, as a result, a risky move to Germany.
Secondly, the gap between the leading clubs and outsiders is so great that many would rather go to Europe than move to the middle peasant camp. In this case, they are unlikely to be able to count on high places, in addition, there is always a risk of being left without a salary. For example, there are already rumors that the newcomer of the RPL "Nizhny Novgorod" is in vital need of a general sponsor, and the president of the Football Federation of the Nizhny Novgorod region even addressed this question to the Minister of Sports, Oleg Matytsin. Therefore, many players do not want to risk their careers and move to a team that may very soon become the new Tambov, Tosno or Anji, but prefer to look for options on the side.
Other factors should not be ruled out, one of which is the positive example of Alexander Golovin and Alexey Miranchuk. Both have demonstrated that moving to strong European championships can significantly raise the level of skill even if you do not have a solid place in the starting lineup. In this regard, the experience of the Atalanta midfielder is more indicative, which has transformed even in conditions of tough competition. Last season, he spent only 818 minutes for the Bergamasks in all tournaments (26.4 on average per match), but still managed to score with seven goals and two assists. The progress of the footballer was noted even by the former head coach of the national team Stanislav Cherchesov, under whose leadership he rarely appeared at the base in the past.
In addition, you can recall Nikolai Komlichenko. Yes, so far his story can hardly be called completely positive, but the departure of the striker to Mlada Boleslav at least allowed him to return to Russia on favorable terms. In the Czech Republic, the impression was that Krasnodar did not count on a textured forward in vain, as evidenced by 41 goals and 13 assists in 71 meetings. True, Dynamo has not yet been able to confirm this - only seven goals in two seasons.
At the same time, the situations around Iosifov and Mikhailov may well indicate that a generation of ambitious football players is emerging in Russia. Perhaps they understand that for development they need to compete with the strongest, and they are trying to move in this direction. The latest results of Russian teams in European competitions clearly demonstrate that the RPL is noticeably lagging behind not only rivals from the top 5 leagues of the Old World, but also from some others.
Suffice it to recall Zenit's defeats to Belgian Brugge, one point scored by Lokomotiv in two matches with Salzburg, as well as CSKA's fiasco in the Europa League, which never managed to beat the Dutch PSV, Austrian Wolfsberg and Croatian Dynamo".
And this is not counting the failures of Rostov and Dynamo Moscow in qualifying, losing on aggregate to the Israeli Maccabi from Haifa and Lokomotiv from Tbilisi, respectively.
Perhaps some believe that leaving for Europe will help players to quickly adapt to the modern realities of world football and make progress in less time than in Russia.
Otherwise, it is very difficult to explain Iosifov's transfer to the second team of Villarreal, because in Russia he could probably play at the base of a number of teams in the bottom six.