Casierra's double, Petrov's blooper and Miladinovich's own goal: what did the RPL round 13 stand for?

Confident defeat in St. Petersburg

The unexpected defeat of Zenit against Sochi and Arsenal gave the fans hope for a revival of intrigue in the fight for gold. The competitors got the opportunity to get closer to the reigning champion, who in the next two rounds, in addition, had key meetings with the capital's giants - Spartak and Dinamo, which shares the second place with CSKA. However, both have demonstrated that the difference between them and the Petersburgers today is too great. It was also quite indicative that Zenit brought the series of home victories over teams from Moscow to eight meetings.

If the red and white conceded seven goals, then the blue and white - only four and even managed to compete with the hosts. But at a difficult moment after the ball missed from Daniil Fomin from the penalty spot, Sergei Semak's charges easily increased the momentum and achieved defeat despite the absence of Malcolm and Douglas dos Santos. But the next bright match was played by other Brazilians. Claudinho scored in the second game in a row, and Wendel scored a beautiful goal. Yaroslav Rakitskiy converted a free kick in the 100th match for the team.

Finally, Artyom Dziuba distinguished himself again, coming on as a substitute after the break, and extended the effective streak in the RPL to six rounds.

This allowed him not only to break Oleg Veretennikov's record for goals in the Russian championship, but also to come out on a clean second place in the list of the best snipers in the history of the club.

The forward has now 102 goals, and he is second only to Alexander Kerzhakov (163).

Successful replacement in Kazan

For the match against CSKA, which got an excellent move, Rubin came up not in the best condition.

Kazan could not win five rounds in a row and dropped to the middle of the standings.

That is why the meeting with the former team in many ways became defining for Leonid Slutsky.

After all, another misfire would indicate a serious crisis in his team.

As a result, the game turned out to be absolutely equal, and by and large, the hosts were not supposed to gain three points.

The opponents had equal possession of the ball and delivered almost the same number of shots (17:18).

But in the added time by the referee, “Rubin” was lucky.

After the corner kick, Mikhail Kostyukov, who came off as a substitute shortly before, sent a shell into the goal.

So Kazan pulled out the first victory in a month and a half and prevented the Muscovites from reaching a clear second place.

And Slutsky again managed to upset the red and blue.

After the arrival of this specialist, his new wards won three victories over CSKA and once parted with the Muscovites in the world.

Moreover, in August last year, the two-time champions of Russia also scored the decisive goal against Igor Akinfeev in the last minutes.

Then Denis Makarov scored with a gorgeous long-range shot.

Curious own goal in Nizhny Novgorod

In general, the 13th round turned out to be rich in goals scored in added time by the referee.

Three teams immediately distinguished themselves shortly before the final whistle.

Among them was Lokomotiv.

Nizhny Novgorod, which had previously beaten Spartak and Dynamo, was close to taking points from another capital city, but could not stand it a little.

The RPL rookie completely gave up the initiative to the opponent and made a bet on counter-lunge. It paid off. In the 30th minute, Ilya Berkovsky opened the scoring during a quick attack and scored his debut goal in the league. Moreover, the rights to the midfielder currently belong to the railway workers, and in Nizhny Novgorod he is on lease. Red-green, in the absence of Fedor Smolov, who passed a false-positive test for coronavirus, lacked specifics, but the team was once again rescued by Rifat Zhemaletdinov, who scored the fifth goal in the current RPL season.

And in the 94th minute, a gross error of the opponent helped the Muscovites to snatch the second victory in a row under the leadership of Markus Gisdol.

Andrei Sinitsyn played unsuccessfully at the exit after serving from the flank and released the ball exactly at Ivan Miladinovich, from whom the projectile flew into target.

If Slutsky made an effective substitution in Kazan, then Alexander Kerzhakov noted the opposite.

The Serbian defender appeared on the field at the end and unwittingly became the author of his own goal.

Total bad luck in Krasnodar

At the same time, Krasnodar hosted another Premier League newcomer, Krylia Sovetov, but unlike Lokomotiv, it was left without points.

In the reporting match, the old disease of the southerners reappeared - the inability to take their own in fights with outsiders and middle peasants.

So this season they managed to make a peace with Rostov and Ufa, as well as give way to Khimki.

In a meeting with Samara, the hosts took the initiative into their own hands from the very first minutes. They owned the ball 62% of the time and struck 16 shots, but failed to hit the other's goal. Twice the ball hit the crossbar after the shots of Tonny de Villena and Eduard Spertsyan. Ivan Lomaev, who made eight saves, also showed himself superbly at the last frontier. Once the team of Viktor Goncharenko managed to excel, but the referee canceled Viktor Klasson's goal due to an offside position at John Cordoba.

Almost immediately Sergey Petrov made a gross effective mistake.

In his own penalty area, he gave an unsuccessful pass back to Matvey Safonov and allowed Ivan Sergeev to intercept and give to Vladislav Sarveli to the empty net.

The only fly in the ointment for the guests was the removal of Dmitry Ivaniseni in the end.

And Krasnodar suffered their second defeat in four days.

In the middle of the week the team lost to Kuban in a derby and was eliminated from the Russian Cup.

The earliest ball of the season in Tula

After the defeat of CSKA in Kazan, three teams at once got the opportunity to rise to second place. In addition to Lokomotiv, Sochi took advantage of it. Such a successful performance of the southerners is one of the main surprises of the current draw of the national championship, because in the summer they lost a number of leaders, including Anton Zabolotny, Elmir Nabiullin and Miha Mevlya. However, the coaching skills of Vladimir Fedotov allowed the team to maintain their positions, having been strengthened by rather modest performers.

Most of them immediately started to be useful.

Among them is the striker Mateo Casierra, who previously played in Portugal and the Netherlands.

In his first seven games for Sochi, he scored five times.

The Colombian scored a double in a difficult confrontation with Arsenal - 2: 1.

The first goal of the newcomer turned out to be significant, because he scored just one minute and 18 seconds after the starting whistle.

This is the fastest ball in the current RPL season and in the history of the team's performance in the elite division.

Casierra himself put an end to the fight in the 79th minute, closing the cross of Ibrahim Tsallagov.

In this situation, he hit the goal of Anton Kochenkov from under Ivan Novoseltsev, who recently played for Sochi.