The 2006 season will formally end for our football only tomorrow with the match “Hamburg” - CSKA, but the first coaching resignation has already taken place in it. On Monday, the dismissal of the mentor of the Samara “Wings of the Soviets” Haji Hajiyev was announced. His resignation took place despite the fact that the contract of the coach with the club expired only a year later. Hajiyev’s successor has already been named - it was Sergei Oborin, who, at the height of the season, was himself fired from Perm “Amkar”. And this rearrangement is unlikely to be the last in the Premier League this winter - the fate of the mentors is too unpredictable. Izvestia tried to assess the situation in the domestic coaching staff.
"We look into the distance confidently"
The positions of Valery Gazzayev (CSKA), Vladimir Fedotov (Spartak), Dick Advokat (Zenit), Vladimir Weiss (Saturn), Leonid Slutsky (Moscow) are now unshakable. The credentials of these specialists are confirmed by the leadership of their clubs during the course of the season or at its finish. And weighty official words in this case are much more reliable than any documents.
Indeed, not a single contract serves as a guarantee of the coaching future (and the present) in Russia. Agreements of mentors with clubs still can not even be the subject of consideration in the dispute resolution chamber - the only football arbitration body in Russia in which players can defend their interests. However, the same “Wings” and without any courts are ready to pay Haji Hajiyev a salary before his new employment. But nobody seems to be able to restore him to work. Conflict of the coach with the sports director of “Wings” Avalu Shamkhanov led to the fact that the owners of the club refused to work with both of them.
The formal claim of the club management is the 10th place of the team in the final table instead of the expected 8th. Although in the contract signed by the coach a year ago, according to Hajiyev himself, clear tournament objectives were not defined. However, the mentor of “Loco” Slavo Muslin was dismissed seven rounds before the finish of the championship, when the team even went on a predetermined rut - in 2nd place, allowing you to play a year later in the Champions League. The reason is simple - it did not work out with the management. As a result, the club was left without Muslin, and without the League.
Then, by the way, Muslin himself could well have replaced the mentor of “Moscow” Leonid Slutsky.
“It’s one of the coach’s professional duties to work even in conditions of a probable resignation,” Slutsky philosophically remarked on Monday in a conversation with Izvestia’s correspondent. “Each of us has a potential substitute, and not one. And it’s important that the quality of your work it didn’t influence. So you put a smile on your face and go to the players to train. "
Well, at least in the coming year, the mentor of “Moscow” smile probably will not be strained - he was given carte blanche until the end of next season.
Where the curve will lead
The position of trainers does not always, of course, depend on their psychological compatibility with employers. The general situation in the club is no less a risk factor. For example, in the fall, talk began about the possible resignation of the head coach of “Tommy” Valery Petrakov. Among the reasons was called not too good financial situation in the club. In such a situation, any mentor is unlikely to guarantee a successful performance.
The question of the candidacy of the head coach of Amkar remains unclear. Rashid Rakhimov and the team decided to survive in the Premier League. However, the Perm club has never been one of the most prosperous in the elite division, and it is still unknown whether its leadership and Rakhimov will find a common language when signing a new agreement.
Is it time to "write letters"?
The hottest situation for a trainer is figuratively called the time of writing letters to his successor. Will any of the Russian mentors have to practice the epistolary genre in the near future?
The most urgent now is the problem with the coach at Lokomotiv. Instead of Muslin, Oleg Dolmatov was invited not only for the last month of autumn. But after the team became only the third in our Premier League and failed to break into the Champions League, the candidacy of its mentor will certainly become a subject of discussion in the offseason.
Mikhail SHPENKOV