Dutch carpenters

This weekend will end the Russian Football Championship - the most interesting in several years. At the time of signing the issue, we did not know the results of the 29th round - Zenit during this time could already formally become the champion. But it is likely that the fate of gold will still be decided in the last round. If Dick Advocaat's team wins, and a week later Guus Hiddink with the Russian national team wins against the Israelis and makes it to Euro 2008, 2007 can safely be called the Dutch year.

The current football championship is easy to fit into the context of the history of the Russian state. If not as a separate chapter, then as a subparagraph characterizing the epoch through a local event, resourceful authors use this compositional technique to save textbooks from the dryness of presentation. In the 21st century, everyone seemed to be used to the fact that Moscow distributed the championship among its sons. The intervention of St. Petersburg in the golden redistribution is like the transfer of the capital to the north by Peter I: the fall of foundations and the substitution of concepts.

The St. Petersburg period of national history is characterized by an active assimilation of Western traditions and at the same time an aggressive foreign policy - and it’s the same in football ... And just like in the time of Peter the Great, the Dutch become iconic figures for building a new world: Lawyer in the Northern Capital and Hiddink in the Russian team . They are like those shipbuilders who gave the carpentry Russian Tsar lessons in the shipyards of the Netherlands.

In June last year, Advocaat came to St. Petersburg to create a new team with the help of discipline. After all, he is from a country where Protestant morality triumphs, which considers labor to be the main virtue. Zenit immediately played three goalless draws, which were unthinkable under the former coach, the Czech Vlastimil Petrzel. He lived only emotions and was alien to organized play, especially in defense.

And then it went, and last fall, Peter was just a little short of medals. But there was so much hope in this “little bit”! She was personified in a small man who looked like Napoleon.

With Hiddink it is different: he, like many foreigners in Russia, quickly absorbed national traits. He has blithely skipped some of our iconic Premier League matches while working as a pundit for Dutch television. When our junior team for the first time in history reached the final of the European Championship, Hiddink did not go there - there were cases in Korea, where he once triumphantly worked, and since then he has regularly performed representative functions of a descending deity.

There were also minor miscalculations - for example, Gus agreed that his compatriot Yop Alberda was appointed the general manager of our team. For 250,000 euros a year, by the way. Yop worked unsuccessfully and not for long.

The lawyer began to reincarnate this spring. His passion for order was no longer so much related to game aspects as, for example, the clothes of football players. At the installation, he could strongly demand that everyone come in white socks. He did not rent a place for himself in St. Petersburg, preferring a luxurious suite at the Kempinski Hotel on the Moika. Thus, he made it clear that he was not going to stay here for a long time. He was offered many times a new contract to replace the one expiring at the end of the year, but he refused. The Dutchman even moved the team to Kempinski. Now Zenit spends the night before the match at the hotel. This is fraught: some players go out into the city to have fun. For Andrei Arshavin, the spree on the eve of the match with Spartak ended in the deprivation of the captain's armband.

It is difficult to explain someone else's actions and thoughts, but, perhaps, the Lawyer was overcome by indifference due to the discrepancy between the declared goals and reality. He was invited to coach a club with European ambitions. Zenit President Sergei Fursenko promised to win three UEFA Cups in ten years, which, however, made the football community laugh: the superclub is obliged to get into the playoffs of the Champions League - therefore, it cannot play in the UEFA Cup by definition.

Zenit, which has the largest budget, acquired excellent players in the offseason. But the club's leaders did not bother to renew the lawn at the Petrovsky stadium at the beginning of the season. It was even worse with the field at the base - it is almost officially called a swamp. It turns out that Anatoly Tymoshchuk was bought for $ 20 million, but at the same time he cannot fully train, and even risk getting injured.

Finally, in the middle of the season, criticism from within also began: the Zenit players did not hesitate to tell the press that they lacked physical exertion in training and tactical exercises, that they did not have a full-fledged team, and they were able to become champions not through teamwork, but due to the individual skill of their stars. Self-revelation is amazing, but in professional sports it’s just deadly - how can you win with such a mood?

But both the imposing Hiddink and the Lawyer already packing his bags achieved the desired result. Beat England - we have one foot in Euro 2008, "Zenith" at least in the Champions League.

Here, too, the metaphor of the St. Petersburg period in the history of Russia will fit. Lush assemblies, fireworks, parades, fantastically beautiful buildings - and at the same time, for example, the flourishing of bureaucracy. Russia is constantly at war and often loses, but at the same time expanding its borders.

Before the recent September match between Zenit and CSKA, Gazprom's managers remembered that the first long-distance match in the country between the teams of St. Petersburg and Moscow took place exactly 100 years ago. In honor of this anniversary, a beautiful action was held, which was called “Renaissance Football”. They were wrong: we are watching football of the Petrine era.