The 13th round of the RPL began with the most intriguing of all possible matches - the meeting of the leaders of the standings.
Another team from the capital, Dynamo, came to visit Zenit, which last week defeated Moscow's Spartak.
For Sandro Schwartz's wards, this departure made it possible to win back a gap of three points and return to the first place, which they had before the fall.
In a more global sense, the game at the Gazprom-Arena was supposed to show whether the blue and white are ready to seriously claim the championship.
This season, out of direct competitors, Dynamo have beaten only CSKA and Sochi, and this is not enough even to qualify for European competitions.
But challenging Zenit on its territory is extremely difficult, and this is especially true for the Moscow clubs.
And in this and last seasons, Sergei Semak's wards beat all the guests from Moscow at home.
The last time they lost points in these confrontations was in February 2020, when they parted with Lokomotiv in peace, and lost to rivals from the capital exactly four years ago - on October 29, 2017, the same railroad workers were able to defeat Petersburgers with a score of 3: 0 at the Gazprom Arena.
In addition, three days before the match with the leader of the RPL, Dynamo traveled to Orenburg as part of the Russian Cup.
And although not all the leaders of the team played then, and the match ended with a confident victory of the guests, Zenit at that time was resting and enjoying the emotions from the last round.
Semak again left Artyom Dziuba in reserve, who was not included in the Russian national team this week, despite his five-match scoring streak in the RPL.
Serdar Azmun and Andrei Mostovoy, along with Claudinho, were at the forefront of Zenit's attack.
Also, instead of the injured Douglas Santos, the blue-white-blue mentor was forced to release Alexei Sutormin.
For Schwartz, the only surprise was the return of Denis Makarov.
The German specialist entrusted him with a place in the squad instead of Sebastian Szymanski, although the game statistics this season spoke in favor of the latter.
Sutormin immediately justified the confidence of the coach.
With his canopy on the eighth minute, the attack began, continued by Azmun.
The Iranian got directly into Ivan Ordets, who was immediately attacked by Claudinho.
The Brazilian managed to crush the Ukrainian defender, picked up the ball and scored it from close range.
After conceding a goal, Dynamo did not make any attempts to seize the initiative for a long time. In addition to the long-range strike of Arsen Zakharyan, the guests no longer had any serious attempts to hit the gate of Stanislav Kritsyuk. However, Zenit did not act as actively as in the previous game. Azmun had a chance to double the score, whom Deyan Lovren and Mostovoy took one-on-one with Anton Shunin, but the forward could not outplay the goalkeeper in close combat.
After the break, the guests nevertheless became more active and returned the intrigue to the match.
A smart pass by Dmitry Skopintsev and a pass to the far post to Makarov should have resulted in a goal, but Vyacheslav Karavaev adjusted the ball with his hand so that it would fly at Kritsyuk.
Sergei Karasev awarded a penalty, and Daniil Fomin converted it, although the Zenit goalkeeper guessed the direction of the strike.
Over the next ten minutes, Makarov had two more excellent chances to bring his team forward, but both times he needed more time to hit than the defenders left him.
This was where Dynamo's courage ended unexpectedly.
The first attack after that, already in the presence of Dziuba, who left the bench, led to a goal by Wendel, who powerfully spun the ball into the far corner after Azmun's pass.
And after a couple of minutes, the advantage of “Zenith” was secured by Artyom himself. After a corner kick performed by Yaroslav Rakitskiy, Azmun shot on goal, the ball from Shunin jumped up, and then Dziuba pushed him into the goal. Thus, he scored his 144th goal in the RPL and broke Oleg Veretennikov's record for performance in the top league of Russian football. At the same time, Dziuba extended his winning streak to six matches.
Dynamo, which until recently completely outplayed the home team, sagged again - now without much hope of a second comeback.
By inertia, the blue and white continued to look for exits to someone else's penalty area, but all their plans were quickly figured out by the defense of St. Petersburg.
In “Zenith” they were not opposed to further increase the advantage and achieve the second consecutive defeat of the Moscow team.
Claudinho could do it, but he hit the crosspiece with his long-range blow.
As a result, Rakitskiy scored the fourth goal against Shunin - he marked his hundredth match with Zenit with a direct free-kick.
Semak's wards scored the seventh consecutive victory over Dynamo in their field and increased the lead over their competitors to six points.
Only CSKA, which will meet Rubin on the road on Saturday, can come close to the leaders at a distance of three points.