The fiasco of Zenit, the record of 39-year-old Lebedenko and the end of the fairy tale Amkala: what do you remember about the matches of the Russian Cup

The end of the unsuccessful Lokomotiv series

In the central match of the second round of the group stage of the Russian Football Cup, Lokomotiv hosted Krasnodar on its field, and both teams approached him in a not the best mood.

The railway workers suffered three defeats in a row with a total goal difference of 1:6, and the "bulls" lost heavily to CSKA in the meeting of the 9th round of the RPL, which was remembered for a number of controversial refereeing decisions.

Looking ahead, this time it was not without them either.

By the 20th minute, Oleksandr Storozhuk's wards managed to first find themselves in the role of catching up, and then get ahead.

The guests answered the exact blow of Wilson Isidor with goals from Vyacheslav Litvinov and John Cordoba, and at the end of the half they could strengthen their advantage.

All the same Colombian worked almost perfectly in pressing and forced Daniil Khudyakov to make a mistake, after which he hit an already empty target.

However, the referee Artyom Lyubimov canceled the goal, seeing the handball in the actions of the attacker.

The mentor of the guests was so indignant at this that he threw a bottle of water in his hearts.

As it turned out later, this goal was not enough for Krasnodar to win.

In the 58th minute, Girano Kerk equalized the situation, and Lokomotiv were more successful in the penalty shootout.

The hosts realized all three of their attempts, while the guests managed to beat the goalkeeper only Christian Ramirez.

The failure of "Zenith" in Samara

If "Lokomotiv" and "Krasnodar" expectedly put up practically the main lineups, then Sergey Semak hoped to take three points in the away match with "Wings of the Soviets" with relatively little bloodshed.

Almost a double of Zenit entered the field, and Claudinho, who had recently recovered from an injury, was put in the role of a kind of “uncle”.

At the same time, his star compatriots Malcolm, Wendel and Douglas Santos did not get into the application at all.

And in the absence of their leaders, the Petersburgers performed extremely unsuccessfully and not only suffered their first defeat of the season, but for the first time since August 2015 they lost to the Samaras.

And one of the culprits of this failure was precisely Claudinho.

He initially looked overly strung up, and towards the end of the second half received two yellow cards in three minutes.

Dmitry Tsypchenko provoked his removal, first demonstrating his acting skills and collapsing on the lawn after minimal contact with the Brazilian, and then forcing him to interrupt his run to the gates of Ivan Quaresma with the help of a wrestling technique.

It is all the more ironic that it was the seventh number of the hosts that subsequently ensured the triumph of the Wings.

In the 83rd minute, he scored himself, and in stoppage time assisted Maxim Glushenkov.

The long-awaited success of "Torpedo"

Another sensation struck in Sochi, where the local team hosted one of the main outsiders of the current RPL season.

Before this game, Torpedo suffered nine defeats in ten meetings in all tournaments, taking points only from the unstable Wings of the Soviets.

And hardly anyone expected that the Muscovites would be able to break the losing streak in the confrontation with the current silver medalists of the national championship.

Especially after the hosts took the lead in the middle of the first half through the efforts of Amir Batyrev.

During the break, Vadim Garanin released four players of the main team on the field at once in the hope of completely depriving the opponents of the chances for a comeback, but it was after that that Torpedo suddenly broke through.

During the second half of the match, the guests struck only four shots on goal and three of them were accurate.

David Karaev took advantage of the positional error of the pupil of Paris Saint-Germain Moussa Sissako, and then the veterans of national football had their say.

First, 39-year-old Igor Lebedenko succeeded with a wonderful long-range shot, thanks to which he became the oldest goal scorer in the history of the National Cup, and Alexander Ryazantsev put an end to the game.

Black and white won the first victory of the season and joined the fight for a place in the playoffs of the tournament.

Labor victories of the favorites

Other giants of Russian football, albeit not without difficulty, have achieved success.

The debut victory in this Cup of Russia was won by Dynamo, which did not allow Akhmat to take the first points under the leadership of Yuri Nagaitsev.

Yaroslav Gladyshev became one of the main protagonists of the White-and-Blues, already by the 30th minute he scored two points according to the “goal + pass” system.

At first he assisted Fedor Smolov, and then he himself left Mikhail Oparin out of work.

Grozny more than one and a half times surpassed the opponents in the number of shots, but they were able to score only once.

Ivan Oleinikov scored for the first time for the new team.

He could have scored a double, but in the end he hit the goalkeeper exactly.

But it turned out for the Rostov forward Egor Golenkov, and for the second time in a row.

Two weeks ago, he upset Dynamo twice, and this time he scored in the match with Orenburg, thanks to which he became the leader in the race of scorers in the competition.

True, it did not save from a tense ending.

Two minutes before the end of regular time, Mikhail Sivakov reduced the gap, but Kirill Shchetinin set the final score on the fifth stoppage.

The fans who gathered at the capital's VEB Arena also couldn't do without a hassle, although three goals were scored not in ten, but in 16 minutes.

Ural, under the leadership of Viktor Goncharenko, was close to taking points from the former team of his mentor, but the CSKA class was still higher.

Yekaterinburgers responded to a precise shot by Willian Roshi after a corner with a precise hit from Alexander Yushin, but they fell short of the penalty shoot-out.

In stoppage time, goalkeeper Nikita Alekseev did not play the best in the moment with the blow of Anton Zabolotny, who had recovered from injury, and hit the ball right on the leg of Milan Gaich.

The end of the road "Amkala"

Two weeks after the departure of the 2DROTS team from the tournament, another representative of the Medialiga completed his performance in the Russian Cup.

Amkal lost to Zvezda and could not get into the 1/32 finals of the competition.

To identify the winner again, there was not enough regular time, and the owner of a ticket to the next round was determined only in the 11-meter series.

At the same time, failures haunted Amkal for most of the match.

As in the previous meeting, they opened the scoring already in the 14th minute, but in the middle of the half they literally gave the opponent a goal.

Referee Artur Fedorov recorded a violation on the Zvezda player dangerously close to the penalty area, but did not demand to play a set piece on the whistle.

Nikita Pershin took advantage of this and irresistibly struck from 25 meters, while the Muscovites were fascinated by the referee.

By the break, Denis Zubko's wards were already losing, and at the end of the match they were finishing with ten men.

Substitute Anton Karpov received two yellow cards in three minutes and left his partners in the minority.

But even in this situation, Amkal did not give up and managed to restore parity on the scoreboard.

Ironically, this was done by Viktor Blatov, who subsequently failed to outplay the St. Petersburg goalkeeper Vladimir Mukhin in a penalty shootout.

The pupil of "Zenith" first parried Vasily Levin's blow into the corner, and then repelled the "shot" of his partner with his knee and put an end to the opponent's prospects - 4:2.