CSKA striker Doumbia breaks a 67-year-old record, Aleksey Ionov gets revenge on his old team and Tom breaks a ten-month winless streak on their home stadium (or half a stadium) – Sports.ru blogger Nikita Koroteev rounds up the action of Matchday 34.
1. Seydou Doumbia’s record-breaking 25th season goal for CSKA
One should not underestimate just how crucial Doumbia’s new record is for CSKA Moscow. Vsevolod Bobrov’s landmark, established 67 years ago, has been like a lighthouse for the club’s strikers – distant, yet inviting. Not many people realise that the Red Amry are going through one of the most successful periods in their history, so the Ivoarian’s achievement may not get the attention it is due. And another landmark is bound to fall this spring: Rotor’s Oleg Veretennikov holds the RPL record for goals scored per season (25). Doumbia needs just one more…
2. Igor Semshov’s long-distance header
Dynamo Moscow’s smallest man scored a massive 14,5 meter header. Semshov leapt in the air at the edge of the penalty area and headed Balazs Dzsudzsak’s cross into the net as goalkeeper Chepchugov scrambled awkwardly. It was Semshov’s third header of the season, as well as the longest-distance header in the league this term.
3. Soslan Dzhanaev and his penalties
Terek Groznyj goalkeeper Soslan Dzhanaev, on loan from Spartak, has «excelled» this season in conceding unnecessary penalties – so far he has gifted the opposition teams four spot-kicks, which is unequalled by any other Premier League shot-stopped this year. Thankfully (for Dzhanaev), the Chechen club was already 3-0 at this point and Krasnodar’s Otar Martsvaladze missed it anyway, but questions over his performance remain hanging.
4. Tom Tomsk finally get a win
Nothing spectacular about this one, but in a stadium like this (see below), it’s hardly surprising. The club that seems to be kept afloat singlehandedly by Vladimir Putin, earned its first home three points in 10 months. Denis Boyarintsev’s winning strike was just like the win itself – forced, lucky, with little aesthetic value and made possible only against such mediocre opponent as Volga.
5. Hotel from hell in Nalchik
No, this is not a scene from a horror film, but a picture of a fridge in a Nalchik hotel, kindly shared with the fans by Amkar’s reserve players during their trip to the south of Russia. As Russian football tries desperately to show the world it’s fake-tanned, oiled up front, once in a while there is a glimpse of it darker side – the horrendous pitch in Kazan being a prime example of it.
Mind you, as somebody mentioned on our Facebook post – it ain’t all that bad if the fridge is working and there’s water in the jug!
6. Alexey Ionov gets his revenge
Alexey Ionov, the enfant terrible of Zenit St. Petersburg, repaid the team who spurned him in full. The Kuban player left the club in controversial circumstances, with alcohol abuse accusations being throw around, and some Zenit team members continued to nibble at the player’s pride after he’d gone. Another Kuban striker, Lacina Traore, took the lead role in the battle with the league leaders, but Ionov had a say in it by converting the penalty and earning a valuable point for his side.
7. The Tom Tomsk stadium
They say a picture is worth more than a thousand words – so we won’t elaborate too much on this shot. In Russia, you clearly don’t need a full functioning stadium to host a match, as long as a couple of stands are still whole, the match will go ahead. We hear that the arena is being redeveloped – let’s hope that it improves, because there really no way for it to get any worse.
8. A gap splits the RPL bottom 8
After Amkar and Terek won both of their two games after the restart, a six-point gap has split the bottom-eight in two. The Perm club seems to have distanced itself from the possibility of playing in the dreaded play-offs against the First Division leaders. We could have anticipated an entertaining battle between the bottom-four clubs, if we didn’t already know that they are Volga, Krylia Sovetov, Spartak Nalchik and Tom – the least exciting teams around.
9. All four RPL top half matches end in a draw
We couldn’t complain about Zenit’s highly entertaining 2-2 draw with CSKA last week, but 4 draws in 4 top-eight matches this week is just a little too much. Coincidentally, «4» is also the number of goals scored in those games. So let’s FOURget about this matchday and move on to better things…
Bonus: Dog day afternoon – no one loves chasing the ball around a field aimlessly more than this little chap, but even he doesn’t seem to enjoy the action in Nalchik.
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