Lack of clarity in the position of Lokomotiv hinders the reliable judgment of the degree of compaction of the upper layers of the tournament atmosphere. He will not play his match from the tour reviewed here in Kazan only on Monday. However, without a couple of missing results, the past weekend can be assessed as one of the most entertaining and informative chapters of this season. It is very similar to the collective supplication of sins committed just a couple of Russian losers in the UEFA Cup.
Indulgence for the Premier League is earned mainly by its recent supporting characters, who amiably drawn to the main roles. And these roles no longer seem without options taken apart by a large trio of the capital. The symbol of rebellious aspirations - of course, “Zenith”. His ambitions are further strengthened not only by the ripening game, but also by the accumulated reserve of points. The bins of Moscow and Saturn are poorer. But their willingness to join the St. Petersburg group, at least ideologically, seems to be very high.
Sunday fights against Spartak and CSKA team Leonid Slutsky and Vladimir Weiss held from the standpoint of their conscious strength. A common achievement for them in a draw was a victory over the middle peasant complexes. And the "townspeople" and "aliens" managed to recoup in the finishing time trouble. Moreover, in both cases, shortly before this, the arbitrators made unrighteous decisions in favor of their eminent opponents. Alexei Nikolaev was clearly afraid of Spartak’s anger and the fate of his colleague Kulalaev, when he did not dare to remove the red-white goalkeeper Kovalevsky, who put Adamov in the penalty area, in addition to the appointed penalty. And Sergei Timofeev, who was a judge in Ramenskoye, ran into an adventure when he ignored the violation of Jo against Petkovich, but immediately reacted with a penalty kick to the continuation of the episode - a stupid defender’s hand game. The referee had to prevent the Saturnian tragedy, having repeated something, but already in the farce genre. His penalty apology at the gates of the army was even funnier than the first: Vukchevich intentionally drove into Aldonin’s leg and flew away from her ...
The championship knows of examples when such refereeing miscalculations cluttered the proscenium, taking away the attention from the game itself. This time this did not happen. This is the merit of all the arguing teams, who worked for the benefit of the spectacle. And also - their leaders, who considered it unnecessary to focus on the flaws of arbitration.
At the risk of being challenged in my subjective judgment, I note: the purely football arguments of Moscow and Saturn, especially in constructing the attack, seemed a little more diverse than their opponents.
In “Spartacus” with the sudden loss of a seven-core and prudent Mozart, the properties of the game nature, summed up by Vladimir Fedotov under the denominator “gaiety”, became even more pronounced.
The dominant goal of the aspirations of the army, which in a row is Stakhanov’s earning penalties with guaranteed implementation of one of them by throwing the ball in the goalkeeper’s neighborhood. These "standards" performed by Carvalho so far inspire rivals and their fans with truly mystical fear. But sooner or later they will find objections, as they are increasingly finding them to other hackneyed replicas of the Gazzaev troupe ...
Regarding the freshness of impressions, out of competition today, we repeat, Zenit. Nalchik “Spartak” looked at “Petrovsky” is not at all hopeless. But he did not have a chance to resist the Baltic wind - the opponent who caught the flurry flew forward "on swollen sails." Note that from the moment of the climb to the St. Petersburg captain’s bridge, Dick Advocaat “Zenith”, now free from European competition risks, retains the uniformity of his uniform. He never, by and large, has not blundered and looks more convincing from round to round. At the same time, in the not far off calendar perspective, Petrograd will meet with everyone who is leading this race ahead of them. But already at a distance - to reach out.
Such is the "zenithization" of intrigue, which threatened to fade irrevocably.
Sergey NOVIKOV