Photo: red-army.ru
Before a two-week hiatus in the championship, CSKA convincingly restored last year’s status quo in the table, arranged the first match of the season without goals for Zenit, scored twice for him and went to the locker room to celebrate the victory and birthday of his president Evgeny Giner.
Such an outcome of the confrontation on the red-hot Luzhniki synthetics became indisputable long before the final whistle. The rivals turned out a typical match “before the goal”. And this goal looked emphatically symbolic. Gusev gave a corner to the right, Ignashevich and Jo, in turn, jumped over all the possible obstacles to a clearly learned rally on a good two heads. The ball must have gone beyond the line after the Brazilian hit, but Malafeev’s desperate throw still left reasons to doubt it. And so the finishing off performed by Vasily Berezutsky looked like a control shot for fidelity: guys, you certainly won’t get up ...
Zenit, in principle, did not try. Very soon, Aldonin cut open the loose defense of St. Petersburg with a longitudinal pass to Wagner Love, who diagonally pulled a pair of defenders over himself and sent the ball and Jo, who met at a point ideal for a blow, into the gap. The result doubled.
Finishing Vasily Berezutsky looked like a control shot: guys, you certainly do not get up ...
However, the most striking illustration of the post-competitive advantage of CSKA was not even his goals, but the indicative attack was already at a score of 2-0. Wagner Love launched the “diagonal” to the left edge. She seemed hopeless at first. To the ball, according to the logic of the episode, Hagen was the first without options. Suddenly Jo rushed through his back with lightning. Against the background of his jerk, the movements of the Zenit Norwegian looked filmed in "rapid". The match hero was the first to enter the penalty area after the ball, and only the Malofeyev goal bar opposed the Brazilian hat-trick.
There were twenty minutes to play, however, the physical condition of the teams and their moods by that time corresponded approximately the same as the speed of Hagen and Jo ...
The confusion of St. Petersburg after the first goal of CSKA was so dissonant with their game at zeros on the scoreboard that made Dick Advocaat suspect of one-sided game plan. It was as if the team did not discuss options for action in the installation in case it would be necessary not just to defend a tactically advantageous draw, but to take something extraordinary, reserved “for a rainy day” to achieve it.
At the time of the spring absence from the injured Dominguez, Lawyer complained a lot about the inability to use game schemes played in the offseason and tied to the Argentinean. The chief dispatcher spent the entire match against the army, but still we can only guess about his special role in the Zenit constructions. For some reason, in Luzhniki, Dominguez more and more “created a crowd” when he narrowed the front of attacks and led rivals along the trajectory of Arshavin's jerks. And the “Pogrebnyak factor” turned out to be inexplicably reduced to zero. Petersburgers did not carry out any sensible action with penetration into someone else's penalty area, while their scorer remained at the same time with an unusual hungry ration.
Not to say that the Lawyer showed readiness to change such a mess. He obviously resorted to the introduction of the reserve too late, and did not even use all of the possible replacements. We admit that in the first half the aforementioned flaws of the Zenit attack were brightened by a clearly organized defense. The army did not have a chance to carry out an attack on the move, and the oporniki Timoshchuk and Zyryanov were almost flawless in the selection. However, already at the end of the first half of the compactness, the Zenit defense bastions began to be missed. Let us recall at least how Tymoshchuk did not have time to prevent Ramon’s strike, reflected by Malafeev in pair with the crossbar.
As for the offensive aspirations of the guests, they came down only to intensive shelling of the army gates from afar and became a good test of the vigilance of their guard Mandrykin. He did not blunder, and the close-ups of Igor Akinfeev, who was rooting for teammates from the VIP box, were needed by the broadcast director not at all for hints, but only for “revitalizing”.
They did not seem to be looking for cameras that did not play due to the disqualifications of Zhirkov and Rakhimich ...
CSKA - Zenit - 2: 0 (0: 0)
Goals: 1: 0 - Jo (59), 2: 0 - Jo (67).
CSKA: Mandrykin, Shemberas, Ignashevich, Ramon (Dzhaner, 82), A. Berezutsky, Gusev, Wagner Love, Jo (Taranov, 90), Krasic, Aldonin, V. Berezutsky.
Zenit: Malafeev, Kryzhanats, Hagen, Shkrtel (Anyukov, 73), Zyryanov, Riksen, Gorshkov (Denisov, 73), Tymoshchuk, Dominguez, Arshavin, Pogrebnyak.
Warnings: Aldonin (31), Tymoshchuk (69), Dominguez (70), emberas (79), Kryžanac (81).
26 of May. BSA "Luzhniki". 2 p.m.
Judge: Marcus Merck (Germany).