The last hint of possible tectonic shifts seemed Sunday meeting CSKA and Zenith. But, it seems, a lot will not be written about her. This is the case when thinking about football itself seems to be useless. Because the game was accompanied by the ninth wave of circumstances, growing from secondary ones, by definition, distorting the result.
It’s good that Moscow was pardoned by the snowfall promised by weather forecasters. However, the team of referees with the smiling Vladimir Pettai at the head quite managed the role of the unexpected cataclysm. I will make a reservation right away that I am in no way inclined to call refereeing the reason for the defeat of Zenit, and even more so - the victory of CSKA. I can’t even assess the validity of a decisive penalty. I couldn’t really make out the episode even with the help of a VCR: the Brazilian-Korean incident in the Zenit penalty area was painfully unsuccessfully displayed by various television cameras.
It’s just that the game had enough other episodes when the referees thought, waved flags and whistled, obviously contrary to the rules. So, they intervened in the natural course of events too often. Who will say now how they would develop if they didn’t think of an offside lineman in the 10th minute, interrupting Arshavin’s absolutely clean jerk to the army penalty box? And do not repeat the mise-en-scene with the same main character almost exactly after the break, already at 1: 0?
By the way, talking about the unscored goals of Arshavin is still incorrect: both times the anti-aircraft gunner beat much later than the whistles that cooled him. And he was not warned for it. And any of the remaining virtual (sorry, Valery Georgievich) cards, coupled with a real one, for a boorish foul against Ignashevich, would mean the removal of the St. Petersburg leader. It did not happen - and this is an occasion for serious reproaches to Pettay from the army.
And perhaps the biggest mystery of the match is the absence of at least one in the list of warned (and there are a dozen!) Zenitists Riksen - no alternative to the toughest on the field. The Dutchman could be removed with a clear conscience after a quarter of an hour - following the shameless hunt for Wagner Love. The referee was honored with a differentiated approach even in the episode of their cockfight, for some reason punishing only the army player.
Apparently, during the break Pettay was blamed for his mistakes. He realized them. And in the second half, he preoccupied himself with how to dispel possible suspicions of bias. And he fell into a destructive sin for the arbitrator: he began to compensate for his disputed decisions. And this gave rise to a chain reaction of nit-picking, emotional dialogues, misunderstanding - and as a result, the game broke up into hassles with endless showdown. Football is gone. It was boring.
CSKA took the next three points in the corporate style. Of the diversity of its current virtues, in order to surpass the dying Zenit, the ability to methodically earn "standards" was enough. Serving from a penalty executed by Carvalho gave rise to a fuss in which the penalty kick was born. Well, a standard and inevitable blow from an eleven-meter “point” in football did not come up with anything at all ...
Sergey NOVIKOV
