Translated material
Army Reserve
Juande Ramos suffered his first defeat against CSKA, but gained time
CSKA Moscow took a step back from its long-time goal of finally making it to the Champions League playoffs. In the opening match of the new group stage, the army team lost to Wolfsburg - 1:3. In the two weeks that Juande Ramos has left before the next meeting with Besiktas, the CSKA coach must figure out how to level out the shortcomings of his team. Otherwise, his urgent business trip to Moscow will be pointless.CSKA was late with personnel decisions made during this transfer period. And it’s not even about the fire invitation of Ramos five days before the first match in the Champions League. Whether this is due to the financial crisis, due to which the club’s still anonymous shareholders did not have free funds to strengthen the team for the main start of the season, or whether it was a fundamental decision of the management, but the very first match with a serious opponent showed that CSKA is unbalanced. And not because Zico, accused of being soft, failed to stage the game. Unbalanced due to the lack of a system-forming player in the center of the field.
Back in the spring, Zico had a clear list of positions that, in his opinion, required immediate strengthening for the Champions League. At that time, Zhirkov had not yet been sold and Vagner Love still remained in the team, but the Brazilian specialist wanted to see at least one more defensive midfielder and right lateral in his team. Šemberas is currently handling the duties of the latter. But the army team clearly needs a new high-class player in the center of the field - without him, CSKA either has a big tilt towards defense or an overly risky emphasis on attack.
Ramos inherited all the same problems from Zico Juande. In his first two army matches, CSKA played two different halves: the first was cautious and disastrous, the second was like a rescue action. With “Wings of the Soviets” it turned out to be successful. In a game with an order of magnitude more powerful Wolfsburg, it is useless. It’s unlikely that Ramos himself likes this swing. But finding a balance point for him, deprived of the opportunity to strengthen the squad, will not be easy.
While the Spaniard is looking for internal reserves. Elver Rahimic was removed from the reserves. The Bosnian was dusted off and placed in the center of the field next to Aldonin. And then Ramos faced a personnel shortage of attacking players. Dzagoev and Guilherme could act in front of a pair of defensive players, Krasic could act to the right, and with this the potential of CSKA’s attack was exhausted. Because hopes for Shchennikov, who operated on the left flank of midfield, as an attacking player are very changeable, and Ramos’ available full-backs in attack are so-so assistants.
It was because of this that CSKA missed the first goal from Wolfsburg. Vasily Berezutsky, having decided to take on the functions of a point guard, performed an unreasonably risky pass, naturally, he made a mistake, and then the whole team was punished with a devastating counterattack, which was calmly completed by Grafite, who went one-on-one with Akinfeev - 0:1. Semberas soon earned a penalty out of the blue, from which the same Brazilian increased the score, requiring some changes from the CSKA coaching staff.
Surely Juande Ramos has several options on how to swing the army swing towards the attack. At least two of them are obvious. The first is to replace one of the two defensive midfielders with a more creative player. But the cautious Ramos, fearing to get a sparse space in the center of the field, which none of his available players is able to close, while he acts in a different way - switches to playing with three defenders. That is, the option that Gazzaev once refused and to which Zico sometimes returned.
Sometimes it works. It could have happened against Wolfsburg if Dzagoev had converted more than just one of the three chances he had. But 18-year-old Piliev played a more significant role in changing the nature of the meeting in favor of the army team. Having come on as a substitute, he developed decent activity on the left side, and the army attack stopped limping towards the left flank.
In general, the sudden infusion of young players into the squad, who then grow into leaders, becomes a trademark of army coaches. Under Arthur Georges, the then unknown Yuri Zhirkov received carte blanche, Gazzaev had more discoveries, and the most striking of them was last year's - Alan Dzagoev. Zico trusted Zhora very much (as he called Georgy Shchennikov)... Ramos continued this tradition, and almost immediately received dividends. If not for another mistake by the defenders, CSKA had every chance to save the game in the nervous ending. And so - 1:3 and a hat-trick for Grafite. But Juande Ramos now has two weeks to find other internal reserves.