Translated material
Salvation Cup
Valery Gazzaev stopped talk of his resignation
CSKA head coach Valery Gazzaev can sleep peacefully for at least another month. On May 17, his team will play in the final of the Russian Cup, and until this date the mentor should hardly fear for his position. But after meeting in the decisive match of the tournament with Perm Amkar, everything can change.Rumors about the possible imminent resignation of Valery Gazzaev have been spreading throughout Moscow all week. The names of possible replacements for the army's head coach were mentioned - they remembered the Dutchman Louis van Gaal, the Croatian national team coach Slaven Bilic, and other specialists. The army leadership did not react to them and remained silent. “Perhaps this is wrong, and the club president is supposed to have solutions for any development of events. But I did not have preliminary negotiations with any of the coaches. I didn’t even have the thought of replacing Gazzaev,” CSKA President Evgeny Giner told a Vremya Novostei correspondent before the start of the championship. Perhaps his position has now changed. But even in his last rare comments, Evgeniy Giner was again adamant: Gazzaev has credibility.
Talk about the dismissal of the head coach did not arise because of some leak of information about negotiations with possible successors. And not even because of unsatisfactory results - in the last two rounds of the national championship, CSKA suffered two defeats. Experts noted a clear regression in the play of the once best Russian team, and the absence of Brazilian legionnaires in a number of matches was very similar to a strike.
CSKA started the semifinal match with Tom in the same way as the whole season. The sluggish army team, due to their class, put pressure on the opponents' goal, but themselves missed much more sensitive shots. One of them could well have ended in a goal - Klimov broke into the penalty area in the first minutes, but Akinfeev, who jumped out to meet him, averted the threat.
The Russian team players were generally on fire that day. And perhaps this will upset Guus Hiddink. He will send his team to a training camp on May 15 before the European Championship, and only the players who will take part in the Russian Cup final will be allowed to be three days late.
The army football players of the national team did everything in their power to later become available to the Dutch coach. The first goal was scored with the direct participation of Zhirkov. The left midfielder broke through his flank and made an amazingly accurate pass to the far post. Krasic, who ran there, was accurate - 1:0.
The second army goal was scored by another national team player - Ignashevich. But by that time the score was equal again. The army team was deservedly punished for their inertia, and Klimov, responding to his partner’s discount, finally hit Akinfeev with a turnaround. And only in the second half did Ignashevich deliver that decisive cannon shot, sending the ball straight over Mandrykin’s head from a free kick - 2:1.
Valery Gazzaev did not look much happier after this victory. A more serious test awaits him in the finale. Amkar, which beat its neighbors from Yekaterinburg in the Ural derby, is determined to take the first serious trophy in its 15-year history.
All these years, Amkar was constantly accompanied by its eternal rival Ural. The Ural derby has, of course, not existed as long as other capital derbies. But in the heat of the moment, the rivalry between the football cities of Perm and Yekaterinburg, separated by 370 kilometers, will in no way yield to them. The semi-final match of the Russian Cup will be inscribed in the history of these derbies as a separate chapter.
It will begin with how Ural President Grigory Ivanov sent a letter to the RFU asking if Amkar’s legionnaires have permission to work in Russia. In Perm they were immediately offended, but just in case they did not bet on the Serbian Injac in the match. The derby itself turned out to be boring and inexpressive: the teams made it clear throughout the match that they were primarily interested in the result on the scoreboard. In fact, the match was sacrificed to him, which ended in a labor victory for Amkar - 1:0.