Evaluation of the first official match of “Spartacus” in the new season allows an approach at least at two levels. You can look at the game only as the first part of the rivalry with Celta itself. Then we will have to sympathetically notice that the meeting took place at a time that is reasonably far from the peak of form. The coaching staff, alas, was not able to raise it at least locally. In comparison, say, with the recent exhibition show in Israel. She, it seems, did not go for the future to any of her finalists.
Then you can quite habitually blame Vladimir Fedotov for the lack of a clear plan for the game. After all, he certainly could not have foreseen the revival of the team only after the break, when the guests had already achieved what they allowed except in the wildest dreams: an away goal in the scenery of Moscow snowdrifts and with low mercury on the thermometer. Moreover, taking the Spartak goal was given to them not even in a counterattack, from which the pessimists warned, but after a full-fledged positional attack. It lasted at least half a minute and had as many as two waves. And the second, scoring, began with an unforgivable pass-pruning of Titov, which pretty much tarnished his canonical infallibility with such a wrecking act.
In the context of general impressions, the captain is not very whitewashed even by the penalty he then earned, from which he equalized Kalinichenko’s score. Egor played bluntly, badly. The ball was mostly away from the ever-present control desk. And after a break, the threads of the game showed up and were completely pulled to the left brow, where the activity of the boyarintsev raised from the reserve spilled with a saving elixir.
Fedotov's intermission replacements, which revived both flanks, are perhaps the only reason for compliments to the Spartak helmsman. Had Bazhenov kicked off at the beginning of the second half out of the penalty area (Kanobbio met the ball on the goal line), this reason would probably have been even more obvious. By the way, this most acute moment at the gate of “Celta” arose after filing a corner. We notice this in order to say in addition: “standards” were the only way this evening to somehow excite the plain-looking goalkeeper Esteban and his not a small number of assistants.
Complaints about the machinations of the referee, who did not appoint a penalty after the contact between Bystrov and Leka, and then did not count the goal because of Pavlyuchenko's offside, we leave to the share of persons exalted. Close your eyes, imagine the episodes regardless of the names of the participants, and you acknowledge that nine and a half judges out of ten would have made exactly the same decisions in the place of the Cypriot Kapitanis.
Given the ending, almost a failure for the functionally exhausted Spartak, the final units can be considered not the saddest outcome of the evening. Much sadder is the strategic alignment before the second match. Intelligence calculations regarding the fact that the loving counterattack “Celta” plays much worse at home than away, can now be ignored. Who would doubt that the pragmatist Fernando Vazquez had enough reason and coaching cynicism to approach the continuation of the argument as a classic game of waiting. After all, “Celte”, unlike “Spartacus,” simply enough not to miss ...
You have not forgotten that we announced two levels of assessment of the Luzhnikovsky match? The second is more global. But everything is simple with him. If everything is in order with logic, then last February evening was in a sense significant for Spartak. If the autumn efforts to save the European Cup place made sense, if the joy of everyone who applauded the Lisbon victory over Sporting didn’t fall in price, should we have seen such a “national team” this morning?
The pre-bid Euro Cup form for Spartak is empty in every sense. Someone saw, felt, caught on the subconscious level even the slightest excuse to count on something more weighty than his last year's “gaiety” - with a game of intuition, with coaching reprisals and a champion's anthem from a mobile phone?
A wave of rumors about a grandiose selection faded and subsided. The negotiating staff who did not deliver a single legionary contract to the club reported for countless foreign trips. The previous, unchanged “Spartacus” falls into the simple tactical tricks of outsiders of the Spanish examples. And he is still being rescued from adversity by the cheerful Chest Boyarintsev and the non-sagging Kalinichenko. Which all winter they tried to sell somewhere. Not to say that it’s expensive ...
Sergey NOVIKOV
SPARTAK - CELTA - 1: 1 (0: 1)
Goals: 0: 1 - Nunez (41), 1: 1 - Kalinichenko (63).
SPARTAK: Khomich, Jiranek, Kovacs, Strantzl, Zheder, Kalinichenko, Bystrov (Bazhenov, 46), Torbinsky (Boyarintsev, 46), Mozart, Titov, Pavlyuchenko.
"CELTA": Esteban, Angel, Placente, Lecki, Tamas, Gustavo Lopez, Pablo Garcia (Obigna, 78), Nunez (Aspas, 71), de Ridder (Bayano, 69), Canobbio, Irenaeus.
Warnings: Placente (17), Kanobbio (36), Kalinichenko (45), Titov (88).
Judge: Kostas Kapitanis (Cyprus).
Stadium: BSA "Luzhniki". Moscow.