Shifted emphasis: why another refereeing scandal in the Spartak match overshadowed the fight for CSKA medals with Dynamo

Disappointing derby

The fans were waiting for the confrontation between CSKA and Dynamo in the 26th round of the RPL with great interest.

This meeting was supposed to be decisive in the championship race.

The blue-and-whites were only three points behind Zenit and had no right to misfire.

However, the capital derby did not live up to expectations in many respects, especially in contrast to the bright battle of the army team with Spartak in the quarterfinals of the Russian Cup.

Both teams thought first of all not about how to crack the opponent's defense, but about how to destroy someone else's game.

Aleksey Berezutsky's headquarters coped with this task more successfully.

The young coach, only for the second time after the resumption of the season, abandoned the scheme with three central defenders and almost completely “mirrored” Sandro Schwartz’s alignment with one difference: he threw a pair of defensive midfielders (Ivan Oblyakov - Jean-Philippe Gbamin) into battle.

The guests placed a triangle in the center of the field with Nikola Moro below and two insiders - Sebastian Szymanski and Daniil Fomin.

This helped the red-blue to deprive the opponent of the advantage in the key zone.

And Oblyakov, who returned to his native position, gave one of the best matches of the season and, in terms of the number of tackles, became the best in the team along with Georgy Shchennikov (four each).

An important role was played by the latter, who, together with Jorge Carrascal, put pressure on the right flank of the guests' defense, where Denis Makarov constantly did not have time to return.

And this tactic worked, because the only ball came from this zone.

But it is one thing to correctly identify problem points in the opponent’s formations, and another thing is to demonstrate your strengths.

Nobody succeeded.

It is significant that "workhorses" like Oblyakov, Shchennikov and Anton Zabolotny played a key role, while the leaders remained in the shadows.

Yusuf Yazici was substituted in the 58th minute.

He had never left the field so early before.

Fedor Smolov rarely met with the ball and delivered only one inaccurate blow.

Arsen Zakharyan and Szymanski also found themselves in the shadows.

The first half turned out to be frankly discouraging.

The ball, although it did not linger in the center of the field, rarely reached the penalty area.

Dynamo scored a couple of non-dangerous shots from a long distance, and CSKA - Carrascal's shot into the near corner, which Anton Shunin coped with without any problems.

After the break, the teams began to play more boldly, and the blue and white even began to turn on the proprietary pressure, which they had been afraid to use before.

But in the 67th minute, the wards of Sandro Schwartz allowed Chidera Ejuka to score and subsequently could more likely miss more than recoup.

Thus, the championship race may de facto end on April 25 if Zenit does not lose to Krasnodar on the road.

But the fight for bronze promises to be much more intriguing, because four rounds before the end of CSKA ahead of Sochi by only one point.

Lokomotiv and Krasnodar can also approach them.

First of all, this concerns the southerners, who have a match in hand just with the railway workers and five of the remaining six meetings will be held at home.

Another scandal involving Spartak

However, the central match, in which the fate of gold medals was largely decided, turned out to be in the background.

Much more discussion was caused by the judicial scandal that broke out in the game of the teams sharing the tenth place in the championship standings - Rostov and Spartak.

Red and white once again were dissatisfied with the work of the referee.

This time, Vitaly Meshkov made several controversial decisions at once.

Firstly, immediately after the break, with the score 1:1, he did not count Mikhail Ignatov's goal, since he played up his hand during a productive attack.

Questions were also left by the first penalty awarded to the gates of Muscovites, when Dmitry Poloz fell on the lawn, tripping over the leg of Maximiliano Kofrier, and the referee, after watching the replay, pointed to the “point”.

And in the 93rd minute, he again allowed the southerners to execute a penalty kick for a foul by Samuel Gigot on Alexander Silyanov, which, as it seemed, took place on the penalty line.

All this caused fierce controversy and a public sparring in the media, which attracted even more attention to the match.

It is surprising that immediately after the final whistle, the head of the RFU ESC, Ashot Khachaturyants, criticized his wards, who called their work in Rostov-on-Don an outrage.

Zarema Salikhova, the civil wife of the owner of the club, Leonid Fedun, immediately spoke harshly.

She expressed confidence that the RPL and the RFU "decided to make fun of" the red-and-whites and demanded the return of the glasses.

Of course, Valery Karpin, who won the fifth victory over her in his career, could not resist the hairpin against the former team.

“Well done guys who won and played football, got out of defense due to short passes, unlike Spartak, who loaded the ball on Alexander Sobolev, they picked it up and didn’t even try ... Spartak surprised with this.

For that kind of money, to play with such players like this, ”the coach said on the air of Match TV.

He was immediately answered by Salikhova, who recalled that in Spartak the specialist had an unlimited budget, but did not manage to win a single trophy.

The clubs' SMM services were not without mutual jokes.

Red and white in their social networks called Meshkov the best player of the meeting.

In turn, the yellow-blue published a collage with a photo of Karpin and the caption "Checkmate, Mr. Vanoli."

One way or another, in the spring, Muscovites had many reasons to be dissatisfied with the referees.

For example, in the derby with Lokomotiv, Sergei Karasev did not send off Alexis Beck-Beck and did not count the goal of Quincy Promes due to offside, although the VAR system did not work.

In the game with Nizhny Novgorod, Sergei Ivanov did not even show a yellow card to Kirill Gotsuk for a dangerous foul on Ayrton.

And a round earlier in the match with Krasnodar, Yevgeny Kukulyak appointed a controversial penalty against Vanoli's wards, which was later recognized as erroneous.

It remains only to complain that the discussion of the work of referees in Russian football actually overshadowed the game itself, and a rare tour does without gross blots and high-profile scandals.