- Where is Bryansk? - RFU staff asked, looking around the guests. - Is there no Bryansk, or what?
“There is Bryansk,” the man representing the club of the first division, who made his way into the top eight best cup teams in the country, smiled shyly.
- Who isn’t? "Ruby" or something?
Rubin, by the way, was not supposed to take part in the draw. He flew out early on. Many, apparently at the subconscious level, lack communication with this team. But nothing can be done. Kurban Berdyev forbade his subordinates to communicate with outsiders.
An employee of the Premier League, who came to insure those who did not manage to get to Moscow, did not remain idle. He pulled balls for "Wings of the Soviets." And now he can count on gratitude. Samara will take “Moscow” in the second leg. And this is at least a small, but an advantage.
- Did everyone get a paper with the rules for the draw? - asked Sergey Kulikov, director of the competition department of the RFU. “But I will read them anyway.”
For control, everyone buried themselves in sheets with text.
“No, wait a moment,” the official realized. - I want to congratulate you on reaching the quarterfinals of the Cup of Russia.
- Better congratulate on the good weather! - the representative of Dynamo retorted. His colleagues perked up, the whine rose, and everyone began to discuss the latest news - probably from the field of meteorology.
“Let's keep the dry protocol part,” the Kulikov stopped the disgrace. - We listen to the rules. We, for example, cannot hold three matches in Moscow. Here are some nuances.
The rules seemed simple only at first glance. It seems to be that there is a lot of difficulty in determining the owner of the field? But the organizers tried to make everyone break their heads.
If there were no questions with the top of the cup grid, but for someone from the Dynamo (Bryansk) - Rostov pair, it was enough to pull out a ball with a large number (for some reason this gave the dubious right to start at home), then difficulties started. People from Wings and Moscow came up to the lottery drum twice. First, they pulled out balls to add up the amount of points (it turned out 16), then they looked at what Zenit and Spartak would have (they pulled 2 and 6 there). As a result, it turned out that it was the Samara team and the “townspeople” who would find out who would play the first match at their stadium (Moscow fell out).
“Do you understand everything?” - hanging over colleagues, the RFU employee asked menacingly. - And then there will be questions, complaints.
The representative of Spartak immediately began to fuss: after all, questions and complaints are the Spartak horse. But he thought and calmed down.
- And what are you so menacingly asking, leaning on the table? - He could not resist, however, from the claim. - Are you scared?
Everyone laughed again.
“Check the balls,” the employee of the organization conducting the tournament gloomily advised.
“Can they be heated?” - the employee of Dynamo was surprised.
“So you check.”
- No, we will not.
The draw took place in 12 minutes. Sergey Kulikov was satisfied with everything.
“Of course, we could not allow Moscow to have three matches at the same time,” he explained. - After all, teams have large support groups. And the police would be hard.
- Can they transfer some matches?
- This is out of the question.
- Any other questions regarding the draw?
- Did not have. I wished all the teams to meet on April 19 at the draw for the semifinals.
It would be great if they all suddenly came.
Alexey Shevchenko