Underground

Everything once happens for the first time. They never start looking for the guilty before an emergency occurs. Appointing extremes retroactively is often pointless and counterproductive. Of course, the employees of the Spartak technical headquarters can now be asked a lot of questions regarding their foresight and ability to think quickly in unforeseen circumstances. You can stagger and practice sarcasm for as long as you want, and in principle fairly. Just let's honestly answer our question: if there were any other team on the way to Moscow’s traffic jams on the way to Luzhniki, would it have found a detour? Perhaps, there are much more chances that the match would have been completely disrupted or started with a scandalous delay. In the end, the Spartak team was prompted by a random fan in traffic. It would be nice to find him and reward him for his quick wits - at least a subscription to the matches of the coming season ...

As applied to Spartak, the day turned out to be full of sinister symbols and allegories. The team dived into the subway just a few hours after the sublime presentation of the future club stadium in Tushino. Moreover, it was on it that the chairman of the board of directors of Spartak, Leonid Fedun, allowed himself to publicly speculate ... about the problem of the long road from the country base to the stadium. He believes that a couple of hours on the bus deprive players of a fifth of the potential. I wonder what percentage of the club boss appreciated his speedy Tuesday misadventures of the wards?

Recently, the “shake theory” has been used in Russian football. In one team arguing for gold, experimenting by changing the head coach. Another excite the delivery to the fateful game by public transport. It is a pity that the experience in both cases turned out to be irreparably sad.

Spartacists, presumably, shook the memory in the subway. The eerie ending for the recent match in Yaroslavl turned out to be forgotten for them, the equally terrible start of the first match with Inter at San Siro, and the warnings that Milanese are traditionally strong in their openings sounded all the last days from Fedotov’s lips.

Goal Cruz looked obsession. In hot pursuit, everyone began to anathematize the poor fellow of Stranzl, who gave a blunder under the pressure of the persistent Ibrahimovic. Is there only much less wine than Kovacs, who suddenly decided to unnecessarily throw the ball back from the central circle? And if we discuss the general, is it only Kovacs who is to blame for this self-shooting pass? After all, he had no other solutions, because the team was at once squandered, as if hiding, under the pressure of the black-and-blue pressure of the guests.

In other words, “Spartak” again upset by its inability to play at a level where they do not leave unpunished disregard for even the little things. The ability of “Inter” to take advantage of the opponent’s minute weakness for the second time in a row turned out to be much more significant than subsequent heroic attempts by Muscovites to fix the situation. Roberto Mancini's team didn’t be prevented from playing dexterous, faster and smarter than the opponent by the echoes of the Saturday derby in Milan, the Moscow cold, or the unusual “lawn”.

By the way, there is reason to tie another symbolic plot to Luzhnikov’s synthetics. Champion's grave-digger “Spartacus” this fall was the Argentine Julio Cruz. He scored all three goals for Muscovites. Without suspecting this for a long time, I happened to learn about the unique beginning of this striker’s great football career. In his first professional club - “Banfield” - he got by accident. At the training two-sided team, one player was missing. And then the coach ordered to enter the field ... the stadium lawn mower watching the occupation. Already the next match that guy came out at the base of “Banfield”. It was Julio Cruz. He was lucky to be born at a time when football was played only on real grass. After all, everything goes to the fact that after five or two seasons the positions of mowers in stadiums will be abolished forever. As unnecessary ...

Sergey NOVIKOV

Group B

SPARTAK Russia - INTER Italy - 0: 1 (0: 1)

Goal: Cruz, 1 (0: 1).

“Spartak”: Kovalevsky - Strantzl, Boyarintsev, Titov, Pavlyuchenko, Iranek, Kovach, Rodriguez (Cavenaghi, 46), Bystrov (Kovalchuk, 54), Mozart, Shishkin.

Inter: Julio Cesar - Cordoba, Zanetti, Stankovic, Figo (Grosso, 72), Ibrahimovic, Cruz (Solari, 83), Micon, Dakur, Burdisso, Materazzi.

Judge: Klaus Bo Larsen (Denmark).

Moscow Luzhniki