Revenge for two

A coach during a match is a theater of conductor, actor and reciter at the same time. (Photo: Almin )

In the end, the double portrait is justified simply on a formal basis: Georgy Yartsev and Valery Gazzaev headed new clubs before the 2000 season. One left the capital for the first time in his career to work with Rotor Volgograd, the second, on the contrary, returned to Moscow and again took the helm of Dynamo.

However, you never know how many coaching changes happen in our football before, and after, and during the championship. Our frequency of appointments and resignations is almost equal to that of the West. But in recent years, the paths of these two have either crossed or overlapped. When did fate begin to regularly push them together? No, not in the fall of 1993, when Gazzaev committed an unprecedented act for our coaching department, leaving Dynamo after losing to the German Eintracht Frankfurt in the UEFA Cup. More likely, in 1995, when Alania, under his leadership, took the championship from Spartak for the first and last time for a year, where Yartsev worked as a second coach. The next season, Vladikavkaz had every chance to repeat its triumph, but a “kindergarten” stood in its way, as Spartak was then called, with Yartsev already in the role of the main one. And a year and a half later, a Spartak player to the core, Yartsev came to save the eternal competitor - the blue and white, who were on the verge of relegation from the major league. And he succeeded in this. Moreover, Dynamo started the ’99 season with an excellent series of several victories, but Yartsev ended up working for the team for almost a year. The loss of the Cup final and the immediate defeat in Vladikavkaz from Gazzaev’s team became the reason for his departure and six-month vacation. And here's a new round.

Now these extraordinary specialists will have to restore the rather lost authority of two well-known teams. That is, to again prove their professional worth in difficult situations, of which they have already had many in their work.

Characters
Perhaps this was not the first episode in my life when I had the opportunity to get closer to the world of football at that time not yet for professional reasons. But the most memorable. In the mid-80s, late in the evening, we suddenly entered the same carriage of a train with a man whom our young fan fraternity so admired from the stands five years ago. "Zho-o-o-ra Yartsev." A forward for the champion Spartak '79, he played only four seasons at the club, however, managing to become the championship's top scorer. But the football public, which does not always have a long memory, remembered him for years. Maybe because it was generally one of the brightest periods in the history of the team. Refreshed by Beskov, Spartak rushed straight from the first league to the top. Ask any experienced Spartak fan, probably every second one will name the lineup of those years without hesitation. Or maybe Yartsev was especially respected, for example, for his patience. Having spent almost his entire career in his Kostroma, he managed to play at the highest level at the age of 29.

We talked then all the way to Moscow and then stood for a long time at three stations. He criticized one of the attackers who replaced him in the Spartak attack: “How come he didn’t score from the tape? Yes, we would have torn off the goalkeeper’s hands and brought such a ball into the net.” He talked about his work as a coach of the factory team "Red Bogatyr", which played for the city championship. And then the reason for the late return became clear: “I have a wonderful boy. He lives outside the city, he comes from training, and there his father drinks and makes trouble. So I’m seeing him off.”

For some reason, this old conversation came to mind when, before the start of the current championship, it was difficult to get through to Yartsev, who was shuttling between Moscow and Volgograd. He began to say how he would like to take Sasha Lipko, who played so well for him at Spartak in 1996, and then got lost in provincial clubs. “He’s suffering there, in Nizhny Novgorod. It’s not his team, and football isn’t his.” He failed to get Lipko into Rotor. But in his new club, Yartsev, as before, is not afraid to rely on young people. With him, a 20-year-old footballer gets the place of the last defender, a position for which nine out of ten mentors choose the player with the most experience. Is there no nostalgia in this approach for your own years lost to playing and coaching? He waited for a very long time. Yartsev, after all, began working in serious football when he was well over 40. “He is a novice coach,” Konstantin Ivanovich Beskov noted last year. - “Is it really possible to be a beginner at 50 years old?” “It’s possible at 60,” answered the master. But even if so, then in this career there have already been so many memorable episodes that no other head coach has experienced in decades. When his time came, he managed to realize his chance on the first try.

When it is necessary to describe Gazzaev’s nature in one word, something like “impulse” or “impulsiveness” immediately comes to mind. Forward Gazzaev, when he was a Dynamo player, sometimes looked like an egoist on the field, a “driver”, in addition, he reacted a lot and emotionally to rivals, partners and referees. But when a person moves from a player to a coach, the rules of the game for him change to diametrically opposite ones. The famous phrase of Valery Georgievich: “I wouldn’t take the football player Gazzaev to my team” seems to indicate the change that has happened to him. But has he become less ambitious with age? He finds it difficult to remain calm. He is rarely seen watching the match from the coach's bench. His favorite place is at the edge, or even “beyond the border of the technical zone,” as stated in the protocols of the PFL disciplinary commissions, which often fine Gazzaev for violating this very border. This means that the player is still alive, no matter how hard Gazzaev the coach tries to reason with him.

Remember the most remarkable actions in his biography. The same sudden resignation from Dynamo. Although, as far as I remember, he did not regret what he did. Or what happened in Alania over the past few seasons. He entered into each one as if it were decisive and almost the last. I changed most of the composition, put together a team, as if before a cavalry attack. And “Alania” was among the favorites for several years, but for some reason the first place kept getting further and further away.

Most likely, the motivating reason for his departure from Moscow to Vladikavkaz was once the desire to show the capital’s football bosses the level of his aspirations, which ended with the only “gold” of the provincial club in the Russian championships. The return, rather, was dictated by something else. Perhaps because Gazzaev finally understood: now in Ossetia, with all his efforts, it is impossible to return to recent heights. And he no longer wanted to hang out in the middle peasants. By the way, Alania’s unenviable position in the current championship is evidence of the significant role Gazzaev’s presence played there.

Ambitions
Despite the similar conditions in which both coaches began their work (Gazzaev has a three-year contract with the club, Yartsev has, as he says, an “indefinite gentleman’s agreement”), now they are still under time pressure. Let's say that the patience of Dynamo fans has long been running out.

The hegemony of “Spartak” in our football leads to the appearance of a progressive inferiority complex among the rest - those who are potentially capable of high achievements. And when repeated attempts to achieve success fail every time, the confusion intensifies. After all, the same “Dynamo” in the mid-90s, it seemed, just a little more - and would finally lead a decisive battle for the championship. But haste, coaching changes, and strange personnel decisions gradually made us forget about it.

The same situation applies to Rotor. The team, which was one step away from gold medals in 97, and if anyone remembers, a year earlier generally held the fate of “gold” in its hands, and itself lost, these fruitless attempts led to moral breakdown. Both Dynamo’s semi-disastrous ’98 season and Rotor’s frankly sluggish play from last year have common roots. With new coaches, of course, nightmares are forgotten more easily, but it is even more difficult for the coaches themselves, because so many hopes are placed on them. Both need victories, even local ones, now. Nobody wants to wait because enough disappointments have already accumulated.

Although objectively, both clubs today are unlikely to be able to fight for more than a place in the prize-winners. But this will also be a step up. However, there is one more common detail in the current situation for Gazzaev and Yartsev: both the leaders of Dynamo and the owner of Rotor Vladimir Goryunov seem to be ready to give them the necessary time to build teams. Do not push and do not demand immediate feats.

Credo
Some believe that Yartsev is a gentle person. They said that he was indecisive and missed time after the triumph with Spartak '96, not accepting several lucrative offers from other clubs. Indeed, the situation looked strange when the winning coach again returned to the status of an assistant. As subsequent events showed, perhaps he was right in no hurry.

His love for working with young people has already been mentioned. Yes, he is definitely not a despot coach. Although, most likely, this is not softness. More precisely, delicacy. The ability to lead one’s own line, but not to interfere in someone else’s monastery with one’s own rules. When visiting Volgograd, especially during the time of the club’s claims to the championship, more than once I had to feel the envious hostility of ambitious provincials towards the capital. This is different not only from Volga residents, but in general from everyone who feels the strength to rub the capital’s nose in the sports stadiums. And the appearance in the city of Yartsev, who seemed to have taken root in Moscow, is a rather subtle psychological moment. I think his work is already being watched with special attention. At the same time, you can see how subtly and respectfully he behaves towards his new team. Even in the offseason, Yartsev did not forget to compliment the players or specifically emphasize that he was not going to instill in them an alien (read “Spartak”) style. There is probably some politeness in these statements, but also some truth. Yartsev needs trust, which he knows how to provide himself, but which he also expects from others. After all, he worked painfully hard at Dynamo, because he was never recognized as “one of his own” either by the fan community or, by and large, by the management. The antagonism of the “red-white” and “white-blue” has a long history, and the suspicion in the air towards a coach from an alien camp backfired on the club itself. The reaction to the resignation of Oleg Romantsev, a friend from Dynamo, was indicative: “For him this is the best way out.” And although the fired Yartsev calmly agreed with this in public, nevertheless, many months later, when talking about Dynamo, he could hardly contain his bitterness. For some reason, it seems that things will work out differently for him in Volgograd, regardless of the results of the first season. Although for many, the tandem of the new coach with the absolute owner of “Rotor” Goryunov looked extremely intriguing: how will the independent Yartsev and the appanage boss exist side by side?

Although Gazzaev was absent from Dynamo for a long time, he was one of his own. Plus he has a team of assistants around him, who have worked together for several years at Alania. The hardest thing that Valery Georgievich will probably experience is the already ingrained fan skepticism towards his favorite team. For too long, Dynamo has been swinging from one extreme to another, and the result is a rather drab football spectacle. The public, by the way, assumed - hoping for it and at the same time fearing - that under the leadership of Gazzaev the team would acquire the dashing and reckless style that sometimes distinguished his charges in Ossetia. So far this is not happening. Rather, Dynamo continue to polish their reliable defense and pressing: what were their strengths in the most successful of the past years. After several rounds, the disaster of conceding four goals in the second match of the championship against Chernomorets seems absurd. But the complete lack of qualified forwards is worrying, which is why they have to field midfielders in their positions. However, until the time for a real test came for Dynamo, the team had not yet met with the undoubted leaders of the championship, Spartak and Lokomotiv. And Yartsev outright lost at home to the railway workers, but he played with Romantsev’s team last Sunday. Before the match, one of the people close to him remarked: “He won’t give Oleg three points just like that.” Of course, otherwise Volgograd would not have understood.


Rotor holds the line in the match against Dynamo. Half of the heroes in this photo are no longer in both teams. (Photo: Almin )