Habitually acting

Andrey Kobelev headed Dynamo

Yesterday, Yuri Semin wrote an official letter of resignation from the post of head coach of Dynamo Moscow, which was accepted by the club’s management. Andrei Kobelev again became the acting head coach. He will lead the team on August 13 for the next round match with CSKA. It is still unknown how long Kobelev will lead the team: there is no consensus in the Dynamo management whether he should become the head coach or whether a specialist with a big name is needed.

Perhaps some clarity will come on August 17th. By this day, the new general director of the club, Dmitry Ivanov, must finally take over the affairs of his predecessor Yuri Zavarzin. It may be that by this time the transfer of a controlling stake in the football club from the hands of businessman Alexei Fedorychev to the central council of Dynamo will become more tangible. The new shareholders will determine who should coach the team.

There is no shortage of applicants. The candidates are the current and former head coaches of the Ukrainian national team Oleg Blokhin and Leonid Buryak, as well as the coach of the Ukrainian youth team Alexey Mikhailichenko. There are options in which Dynamo could accept the Czech Vlastimil Petrzhela, who was recently fired from Zenit; as always, Anatoly Byshovets is ready to work with the Premier League team. But if Andrei Kobelev manages to prove himself within the allotted time, his chances will be very high. Kobelev will have such an opportunity - on August 13, the outsider Dynamo will play with the championship leader CSKA.

Meanwhile, Andrei Kobelev was already acting as the team’s head coach. Dynamo won its only victory in the current championship over Luch in the seventh round when Kobelev was leading the players from the coaching bench - Yuri Semin, while serving a disqualification, was watching the game from the stands. Before this, Kobelev led the team last year after Oleg Romantsev left Dynamo. Things went quite well under him, but he was soon replaced by the Brazilian Ivo Wortmann. One of the reasons why Kobelev was not appointed head coach was the lack of a license. Now the current acting The head coach has such a license, but only category “A”, that is, it allows him to work only as an assistant head coach in Premier League teams. However, in Russian football it is customary to turn a blind eye to such violations: the current Spartak coach Vladimir Fedotov does not have any license at all - he is just finishing his studies at the Higher School of Technology.

Andrey VDOVIN