Spartak cavalry was hit by a tank

Muscovites took a chance and gave the fans a good game. Performed by Chelsea

When you bang your head against the wall, you should not be offended by the wall. No one was offended by Chelsea - the overcrowded Luzhniki quickly realized that there were differences between leader and leader. "Spartak" and "aristocrats" in Group F of the Champions League before the match in Moscow...

When you bang your head against the wall, you should not be offended by the wall. No one was offended by Chelsea - the overcrowded Luzhniki quickly realized that there were differences between leader and leader. “Spartak” and “aristocrats” in group F of the Champions League before the match in Moscow were on a par, but points are one thing, and the game is quite another. The guests treated the hosts with complete seriousness, which left the red-whites practically no chance.

Football was fighting, even desperate on the part of Spartak, the result turned out to be hopelessly logical, the aftertaste turned out to be mixed, not without bitterness. But with a general conclusion in the spirit of “there’s nothing to be done about it” and “thank you to Spartak for Chelsea, for the very opportunity to see firsthand how the mechanism works, assembled with the money of Roman Abramovich, debugged by the greatest of the great Jose Mourinho and brought almost not to perfection, too, by the great Carlo Ancelotti.

It seems that the Spartak players even knew too well what was moving on them (which head coach Valery Karpin complained about after the game). The light cavalry, waving their sabers at first, came under a tank attack. When the hosts grew bolder, it was already too late: sensing timidity, Chelsea usually does not miss its own - it simply pushes equals in the class, and clicks the light-footed and desperate ones like nuts. Even without Drogba and Lampard, which we once again saw.

That doesn't mean at all that Chelsea don't get hit. If they hadn’t been beaten, the team would have long since reached the European peak, the closest thing to which it was in Luzhniki more than two years ago in the landmark final against Manchester United. And now someone will slow down Abramovich's guys. It is a pity that not Spartak, which failed to make them nervous.

A crazy goal was not enough (but they could have scored at the beginning, they could!). But for some reason, the ball fell perfectly on the foot not of Kombarov or Welliton, but of Zhirkov. It was a stunningly beautiful arc with goalkeeper Dikan flying in the background, Yuri's first goal in an official match for Chelsea. The second goal with the final authorship of Nicolas Anelka (wish he played for the French team, from which he was excommunicated right at the World Cup in South Africa), turned out to be both powerful and aesthetic, after which the guests could slow down. "Spartak" in the second half made them not lose their vigilance, but nothing more.

Most likely, Chelsea will decide the issue of entering the playoffs from the first place already in London in the next match with red and white, and then they can experiment. Leaving Spartak nothing else but to defend the right to be second.

Spartak fought Chelsea, Rubin butted Panathinaikos in Athens, where he arrived lightly with one point and the hope of taking three. But even being on the edge, the Kazan club did not change itself - and did not really play, and did not let the Greeks. Either the time to go crazy has not yet come, or nothing can change the philosophy of Kurban Berdyev, or (and this is most likely) the attacking resource of Kazan is rather weak today. No wonder - Semak and Bukharova were snatched from Kazan by Zenit at the right time, and also under the Champions League. But it turned out neither for themselves nor for the people - and the former leaders of Rubin in St. Petersburg were put on a bench, and the Champions League was safely missed.

Kazan has one chance left - to defeat Pao at home and hope that Barcelona, ​​which has gone into the lead, will not play the fool in the remaining matches. The situation is similar to Spartak's, with one difference - Rubin's points are not enough, only two, you will have to take risks anyway. But no matter how late it may be, in this case the position of Valery Karpin's team left without points in Moscow is much closer to me than the position of Kurban Berdyev's team in Athens. "Pao", of course, is not a gift, but far from Chelsea, it was possible to play more insolently.

There is no reason to lose heart, especially to rejoice - too. Two goals from Chelsea in Moscow are not five goals from Shakhtar Donetsk from Arsenal in London, but the champion of Ukraine is equipped to the eyeballs, not like Spartak. But he fell apart instantly, after the first goal. In general, it was a tour where the favorites basically put in place the upstarts who imagined themselves, among which were the Muscovites and the Donetsk team. As they got into the leaders, they can fly out, and in the very near future.

And there are no recipes, except for the one that was offered by Spartak in the second half of a luxurious (by our internal standards) match - to finally see in the "celestials" ordinary, equal football players, to fight to the end, not to give up even when hopes does not remain. Let the performance of the hosts and it looked like beating his head against the wall, but they deserve respect. This means that the full stadium was not going in vain.

As usual, the organizers created big problems for the people (as if Luzhniki were gathering a full house for the first time), but it was worth getting into the stadium that evening. The fans were going to win, they were defeated, but there was just that rare case when the result is forgotten, but the game remains.

Let this apply more to Chelsea than to Spartak.