Downhill

Lokomotiv's crisis worsened with relegation from the Europa League

Lokomotiv Moscow failed to reach the group stage of the Europa League, losing in the fourth qualifying round to Swiss Lausanne. This team plays in the second division of the Swiss championship, and entered the Europa League as a finalist in the country's Cup last season. However, Lokomotiv is so bad now that it has had enough of Lausanne from the second league.

It’s hardly worth going into detail about how Lokomotiv lost to the team that took tenth place in the second division of the Swiss championship last season (Lausanne is in the lead this season). Last week, the railway workers drew 1:1 away, and both teams played defensively in such a way that the match could have ended with almost any score.

In the home game on the evening of August 26, it was enough for Lokomotiv not to concede. However, after Sunday's Russian Championship match with Dynamo (0:3), optimists found it hard to believe, and pessimists did not believe it at all. Both turned out to be right: Lausanne's Brazilian striker Silvio Carlos opened the scoring in the 17th minute. Lokomotiv managed to win back only five minutes before the end of regular time.

Lokomotiv squad at the end of summer 2010. Option "Lenta.Ru"

The extra time turned out to be the same in effectiveness as the “Interception” plan usually is, that is, it did not produce any results. After the penalty shootout, won by Lausanne with a score of 4:3, Lokomotiv head coach Yuri Semin rightly noted that it was much easier for the Swiss to take penalty kicks, since they had nothing to lose. But Lokomotiv continues to lose the remnants of its reputation, which a few years ago was very solid.

Most Lokomotiv fans believe that the team's troubles began in 2005, when Semin left the post of head coach. He was promoted to the Russian national team, but the promotion was short-lived and not very strong. The Russians, as you know, failed to reach the final tournament of the 2006 World Cup, after which Semin was replaced as coach of the national team by Guus Hiddink .

Until the end of the 2005 season, Lokomotiv was led by Semin's former assistant Vladimir Eshtrekov, who led the team to bronze medals in the national championship. After the championships of 2002 and 2004, such a result seemed like a failure, and Loko began 2006 under the leadership of the Serb Slavoljub Muslin . The team led by Oleg Dolmatov finished the season and again took third place.

At the end of December 2006, Yuri Semin returned to Lokomotiv, who took over the post of president of the club. Anatoly Byshovets became the head coach, and many now call this decision one of the main mistakes in the recent history of Lokomotiv. Byshovets led the railway workers to victory in the National Cup, but had a fight with long-time team captain Dmitry Loskov, who was forced to leave.

In the Russian Championship, Lokomotiv finished seventh, and Byshovets and the Semins left their posts. At the end of the season, Rinat Bilyaletdinov managed to lead the team, and Lokomotiv began 2008 with a new head coach, Rashid Rakhimov. In the Premier League, he showed results no worse than Byshovets, leading the railway workers to seventh place.

Yuri Semin. Photo from the official website of Lokomotiv

Rakhimov was given another chance, but he quickly missed it. In April 2009, Rakhimov was fired, Vladimir Maminov served as head coach for a short time, after which Semin returned to Lokomotiv for the second time. The club's management managed to agree with Dynamo Kyiv on the early termination of the mentor's contract, and Semin, after a four-year break, headed the Lokomotiv coaching staff.

In the 2009 Russian Championship, the railway workers once again failed to reach the medals, taking fourth place. However, firstly, fourth place is better than seventh; secondly, it gave the club the opportunity to compete in the Europa League; thirdly, Semin had every reason to explain the modest result by the fact that he was not the one who prepared the team for the season. However, in the 2009/10 off-season, the question of changing the Lokomotiv coach for the first time in many years did not arise and did not even make any attempts to raise it.

The team started the 2010 season back and forth, and more often it turned out “there” (defeats from “Rubin”, Moscow “Spartak” , “Zenith” and “Saturn”) than “here” (draw with CSKA , victory over Dynamo) , defeat of "Wings of the Soviets"). However, before the break in the Premier League associated with the World Cup in South Africa, only Zenit played brightly and consistently, and the other contenders for medals had no less difficulties than Lokomotiv.

However, after the 2010 World Cup, Lokomotiv slowed down as if someone had pulled the stop valve. It all started with a defeat in the 1/16 finals of the Russian Cup, where the team lost to Gornyak from the city of Uchaly, which plays (without much brilliance) in the Ural-Povolzhye zone of the second division of the Russian Championship. Since July 25, Lokomotiv have not lost all but three of their last five Premier League matches and have drawn two more times.

After the defeat from Lausanne, it became clear that the team was not slowing down, as it seemed a month ago, but had gone off the rails and was going downhill. At the post-match press conference, Semin said that “the result, of course, is very, very sad,” somewhat reminiscent of the hero of a once popular video .

After the match, Lokomotiv fans gathered near the stadium locker rooms, chanted obscene chants and wanted, as the Soviet Sport newspaper wrote on August 27 , “to express their point of view to the team.” The police, having listened to the fans' point of view, decided that the team would do without her, and pushed the fans away. Most likely, it would be difficult to surprise the Lokomotiv players who heard Semin’s point of view after the game with the words of the fans. Unfortunately, both the words of the coach and the words of the fans remain unanswered.

Andrey Melnikov

Downhill

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