I cannot help but express my admiration for the fruits of Kurban Berdyev's coaching work - and at the same time, the joy that the fruits of his work will not be associated with the Spartak team, which I have been rooting for since the young player Berdyev began playing for Ashgabat's Stroitel (aka Kopetdag, aka Kolkhozchi). He is not a Spartak coach, and it is very good that Leonid Fedun was unable to reach an agreement with him. Would Spartak's victory over Barcelona and Anderlecht have been pleasant - but at the cost of Berdyev's play? I am not sure.

It would be tempting to imagine that Berdyev’s first steps as a player were connected with the outstanding coach Valery Nepomnyashchiy, who once coached Turkmen teams, but alas, they did not coincide; Berdyev the player had already left for Rostov.

In addition, coach Berdyev has undoubtedly achieved much more than coach Nepomnyashchy – Rubin was the Russian champion twice, and now Rostov, the silver medalist, has reached the group stage of the Champions League (formally, of course, Rostov was led by Dmitry Kirichenko, but I think the new head coach himself knows whose main merit in this achievement).

CSKA and Rostov's opponents in the Champions League group stage have been determined

Lifestyle / Sports

Kurban Berdyev worked with Rubin for 12 years. Whether it was Berdyev's strong character or the Tatar bosses who believed their co-religionist, this is one of the rare examples in Russian football when trustees did not dictate to the team's manager for a long time what to do on the field and who they would like to see on the field.

One of the reasons for Berdyev's success must have been his Turkmen origin. Turkmens, as Turkmenbashi wrote in the book "Rukhname", are endowed with two virtues - inspiration and integrity; people are valuable not by themselves, but as part of the whole; and the whole is greater than its components.

The same situation as in Rubin seems to have arisen with Berdyev in Rostov – on the one hand, they say, again because of his strong character, and on the other – because of the team’s bleak financial situation; so the talented Turkmen coach was apparently quite independent in his actions. I would venture to suggest that other Russian coaching talents might have been revealed if non-interference in coaching matters had been professed in football clubs. But this is not the custom in Russia: the boss, who is also the owner, understands everything about the business he manages, that is, owns, and nothing has been done with this Soviet legacy. It is triumphant again – with rare exceptions.

Berdyev and his Turkmen character