Masters' pause

Teams are in no hurry to make high-profile acquisitions

The Russian football transfer market looks strange and unusually empty. Premier League teams have returned from vacation, and many of them have already gone to foreign training camps, but there are no high-profile acquisitions that have already become traditional for the Russian football winter. It could be Dynamo’s fault, which made all its major purchases before the New Year, or CSKA and Spartak, which seem to have left questions about possible large-scale strengthening until the summer, before the start of the Champions League. But everyone else, including St. Petersburg Zenit, is still on pause, limiting themselves to working on the domestic market.

Everyone was expecting some kind of transfer sensation from Zenit. The club, whose main shareholder was Gazprom before the New Year, is seriously talking about its claims to the championship, and the semi-officially announced budget of $60 million meets these goals. But for now, head coach Vlastimil Petrzela is complaining that his team doesn’t see a single player from the list of possible acquisitions he compiled before his vacation. The list does not seem to be very long, but quite representative. The first number in it was Jiri Jarosik, who is currently playing in the English Birmingham. However, according to Petrzela, Chelsea, which owns the rights to the midfielder, put an exorbitantly high price for the Czech. In addition to Jarosik, Petrzela asked to buy Patrice Evra (moved from Monaco to Manchester United), Argentinean Marcelo Gallardo (River Plate) and Andrei Karyaka.

The latter actually makes for an amazing story. In June last year, Portuguese Benfica, according to various sources, paid from 1.4 to 2.5 million euros for the main midfielder of the Russian national team. Six months later, the reserve of the Portuguese team, who played 432 minutes in matches of the national championship (1 goal) and 24 minutes in the Champions League, costs three times more - 5-6 million euros. So it is not surprising that Moscow has already refused to acquire him, and Zenit is in no hurry to complete negotiations. Sergei Semak has a similar situation. A year on the Paris Saint-Germain bench increased the transfer price of the midfielder by at least 1.5 times.

So far, the only acquisition of the St. Petersburg club has been the Korean Yong Min Hyun, whose main problem, according to the Zenit management, is not knowing even the English language. In order for the Korean to have more fun, it is planned to buy another of his compatriots. For now, the plans of the gold contender are limited to this. Rubin Kazan is also showing interest in Korean footballers. Two Asians arrived at the location of Kurban Berdyev's team - San Kyu Kann and Huyen Chong Ryu. Where they came from, how much they cost and how they play remains a secret even for the Rubin coaching staff.

But at the beginning of the year, the clubs quite actively exchanged players who had already played in Russian teams. A potential candidate for the Russian national team, Pavel Pogrebnyak, managed to break out of Spartak Moscow and signed a contract with Tom. Moscow acquired free agent Petr Bystrov, whose employment agreement with Saturn had expired. In turn, the Moscow region club, having also parted ways with Kanchelskis, added Serbian Partizan midfielder Vukcevic, and also signed contracts with Alania striker Gogniev and midfielder Nakhushev from Khimki. By the way, Khimki’s new owners have become the main supplier of players on the domestic market. Two players from this team, Smirnov and Ospeshinsky, joined Luch-Energia, Perov and Danishevsky moved to Torpedo, Dynamo and CSKA are fighting for Eshchenko, and Torpedo and Moscow are fighting for Oleg Ivanov. Andrei Chervichenko, who closed his football business, sold the rest of his players to first division clubs.

Of all the other events of the Russian off-season, it remains to be noted only the official transfer of ex-Spartak Vidic and ex-Dynamo Maniche to the English Manchester United and Chelsea. Apparently, these two players will remain the main losses of the Russian Premier League. But there will definitely be more acquisitions. Turkish striker Real Sociedad Nihat is undergoing a medical examination under the supervision of a Spartak doctor. After the new head coach of the team, Slavolub Myslin, gets used to Lokomotiv, it is quite likely that some foreigners will appear in the camp of the “railroad workers”. Dynamo and CSKA did not curtail their transfer activities. But Russian clubs have less than three weeks to spend their money in Europe - the transfer window closes on January 31.

Andrey VDOVIN