Translated material
One hundred to one
Kerzhakov's anniversary goal brought Zenit victory
St. Petersburg Zenit yesterday tried to do everything so that Russia would have three representatives in the group stage of the Champions League this fall. In the first match of the last qualifying round, Luciano Spalletti's team defeated the French Auxerre - 1:0.Perhaps the real struggle between Russia and France for the status of the fifth strongest national championship in Europe begins with this confrontation. Ukraine is wedged between these countries in the UEFA coefficients table due to the last successful season. But in terms of financial capabilities, the Russian Premier League will most likely compete with the French Ligue 1. In any case, the budgets of the bronze Russian champion Zenit and Auxerre, which finished third in the French championship last season, differ by a factor of two in favor of the St. Petersburg team.
Before the game in France, they often remembered that Zenit is the richest club in Eastern Europe, which can afford to spend about 50 million euros in one transfer campaign. Even Real Madrid paid little more for new signings this summer. The Auxerre players, however, were brave and were not going to give up ahead of time. “I assure you that the difference on the field will be much smaller than the difference in our budgets,” Polish forward, bronze medalist of the French championship, Ireneusz Jelen, told the official UEFA website. - We know how dangerous the opponent is, but we are not afraid of him. Money doesn’t play football, which is what we will try to prove. No one puts much pressure on us. I think it’s much more difficult for Zenit in this regard, since the club, unlike us, spent a lot of money on acquiring newcomers. Of course, it would be nice to make it to the next round, but in the club they don’t tell us: “We have to win, or the world will cease to exist.”
But for the strengthened Zenit, the confrontation with Auxerre could be characterized exactly like that. But from the first minutes, the St. Petersburg team tried to forget about psychological pressure, deciding to stun the opponent with speed and pressure. Luciano Spalletti's plan worked in the 3rd minute, when Kerzhakov opened the scoring. Moreover, the Zenit forward scored with a header, which rarely happens to him. While the Auxerre defenders, frozen in unnatural poses, watched the ball fall directly on the Russian striker, and the visiting goalkeeper, as if in slow motion, jumped into the corner, Kerzhakov was already running to the stands to celebrate the goal - 1:0. The hundredth goal of the St. Petersburg football graduate for Zenit turned out to be very important.
Zenit tried to build on the success. The high-speed, strictly vertical attacks betrayed the coaching hand of Luciano Spalletti, and only the training of the Auxerre defense saved the guests from additional troubles. So we had to wait almost half an hour for the next truly dangerous moment at Soren’s gate. How Shirokov managed not to send the ball into an empty net from two meters in this episode is unlikely to be explained by the midfielder himself. But in the second half, he missed an even more profitable opportunity.
However, a lot of interesting things happened before the break - Kerzhakov’s free kick, to which Soren reacted miraculously, and a couple of dangerous attacks by the revived Auxerre. In one of them, Malafeev saved the game by parrying a shot from Le Tallec, who had outwitted the hosts’ defense. In the second, the ball hit the crossbar of the Zenit goal.
A quarter of an hour was enough for Spalletti to again set up his team for an attacking high-speed game. But, without surviving Shirokov’s very moment (the Russian midfielder completed the pass too relaxed, and the goalkeeper managed to take the ball off his foot at the last moment), the guests came to their senses much faster. And Elenya’s entry into Malafeev’s goal and the shot, after which the ball landed on top of the net, should have been a good signal to Zenit. If one of his defenders did not understand the first time, Elen repeated the warning - Malafeev came to the rescue again, deflecting the shot into the near corner.
It has long been noted that Zenit is unable to maintain the pace required by Spalletti until the end of the match. And it depends only on the class of the opponent how much the St. Petersburg team will be able to do. With Auxerre, Zenit's fuse ran out around the 70th minute. The hosts still had the initiative, but positional attacks were less and less likely to explode with unexpected aggravating passes or shots. However, by this time it was much more important for Spalletti’s team to keep a zero in the “goals conceded” column.
Zenit succeeded, and a week later they met in France. However, the score of the first match does not guarantee that the world will not cease to exist for Zenit.