Sochi approached the match with Spartak not in the best condition.
Firstly, in the last six rounds of the RPL, the southerners won only one victory and dropped to ninth place.
Secondly, they survived the change of head coach.
Although the club did not officially confirm this, but, according to media reports, Vadim Garanin left his post, and Alexander Tochilin was preparing the players for the game.
As a result, in the application, as well as on the bench, there really were no reserve specialists, allegedly due to illness.
Even more surprising was the absence of the indispensable leader, Christian Noboa.
The Ecuadorian in the last 13 meetings of the national championship invariably got into the starting lineup, but this time, due to damage, he was not even present in the reserve.
On top of all the troubles, the main defenders Vanya Drkusic and Igor Yurganov were out of action.
Under such conditions, the coaching staff had to experiment.
For example, in the center of defense, only one specialized performer, Ivan Miladinovich, found a place.
He was accompanied by nominal laterals Sergei Terekhov, who repeatedly closed this position, and Timofey Margasov.
And in the center of the field, a duet of Ibragim Tsallagov and young Timofey Shipunov was forced to form.
Against this background, the opponent had almost no problems, and even one of the injured players, Ruslan Litvinov, returned to action.
However, he remained on the bench, and Guillermo Abascal did not change the winning roster after a successful confrontation with Torpedo.
He decided not to give up on the powerful attacking trio of Quincy Promes - Shamar Nicholson - Alexander Sobolev.
And already in the seventh minute, the Muscovites took advantage of the hosts' problems in defense.
Makarchuk allowed Daniil Denisov to serve from the right, and Margasov did not have time to cover not the highest Promes and allowed him to calmly send the ball into the net from the “second floor”.
For the Dutchman, this goal was the 13th in the current RPL draw, which allowed him to strengthen his leadership in the scorers race.
In general, Spartak had an overwhelming advantage in the first half hour.
The red-whites practically did not give the ball to the opponent and did not release it from their own half.
In many ways, a successful debut was due to superiority in the middle of the field.
Danil Prutsev and Roman Zobnin outplayed their counterparts in the support zone and did not allow them to launch attacks.
It is no coincidence that shortly before the break, Tochilin removed Shipunov, who did not get into the game, from the field and threw Vladislav Sarveli into battle instead of him.
Prutsev was especially good at Spartak.
He not only regularly pulled back to Pavel Maslov and Georgiy Jikia, helping them look for options ahead, and made sharpening passes, but also completed a huge amount of rough work.
And the three forwards regularly received passes and confused the defenders.
Promes, Sobolev and Nikolsson gladly changed positions, creating organized chaos.
Quincy played the role of a "free artist" at all, moving around the entire perimeter.
However, in general, the defense of Sochi coped with the pressure and in the first half allowed the Muscovites to deliver only one shot on target.
Ahead of the hosts for the time being did not get anything.
In the absence of Noboa, there was simply no one to link defense and attack and find attackers with passes.
As a result, Georgy Melkadze, who was burning with the desire to score against the former team, almost never met the ball and scored only offside hits.
The red-whites, closer to the break, got the impression that they relaxed and slowed down.
Southerners immediately took advantage of this.
They chose the right flank as a weak point in the construction of the guests, where Denisov did not always cope with the technical Joaozinho and Makarchuk.
Several innings from this zone served as dangerous calls.
But they were not heard, and in the 45th minute the hosts equalized.
After Joaoozinho's cross, Selikhov hit the ball right in front of him, and Kirill Zaika calmly sent it into the net.
At the same time, no one took care of the defender who joined the attack.
Initially, Nikolsson followed him, but already in the penalty area, the striker unstuck from the opponent, running away.
It seemed that after an optional goal, the favorite would wake up and play differently.
But that did not happen.
On the contrary, the guests almost missed.
Prutsev presented the ball on the left edge of Melkadze, and he completed the pitch into someone else's penalty area.
Sarveli competently missed the ball on Joaozinho, and he powerfully hit the rally on target.
Selikhov not without difficulty coped with this shot.
It was curious how Abascal would behave in such a situation, having established himself as a coach, able to influence the course of matches by castling.
At the end of the hour of the meeting, he made the first change.
Instead of the inconspicuous Sobolev, a recovered Litvinov appeared on the field.
Alexander reacted emotionally to the mentor's decision and hit the bench.
Spartak, without him, abandoned the arrangement with three forwards and switched to the more familiar 4-3-1-2 with Mikhail Ignatov under the striker and Litvinov, Zobnin and Prutsev in the support zone.
This helped the red-whites regain the initiative in the center and take the ball under their control.
However, it was almost impossible to penetrate into someone else's penalty area.
I remember only Nicholson's inaccurate shot from outside the goalkeeper's area.
True, by that time the referee had already recorded an offside position.
The guests did not manage to impose their game on the opponent and got bogged down in the struggle and a huge number of martial arts in the opponent's half.
From time to time, Promes tried to decide the fate of the match alone, but his passes did not give a result.
Abaskal, in the 73rd minute, also threw Anton Zinkovsky and Pavel Melyoshin into battle, who replaced Ignatov and Nicholson in position, respectively.
These castlings turned out to be completely meaningless.
The calculation on the midfielder's technique did not materialize, since he was not provided with free space, and the young striker almost did not meet the ball.
As a result, Spartak failed to even organize the final assault and lost points in the confrontation with the team, which was experiencing serious personnel problems and, in addition, threatened to lose its head coach in the near future.
Also, Sochi once again proved to be an uncomfortable opponent for the red-whites.
In meetings with this team away, they did not win a single victory and suffered three defeats with a single draw.
Moreover, Promes' ball turned out to be their debut at Fisht.