Rubin’s Alexander Bukharov and Dynamo’s Betao (foreground L-R) in action during their UEFA Champions League match Rubin Kazan vs. Dynamo Kyiv. (Photo ITAR-TASS / Roman Kruchinin)
Some will argue it was the best of recent times, others will wonder what all the fuss was about: the Russian Premier-Liga is consistent in so far as it polarises opinion and 2009 was no different.
I walked into a commentary box back in February and felt the need to fight the corner of the RPL. “Which team will win?” asked one commentator; “it depends whose turn it is,” answered another one. All stuff to make the blood boil, people who were obviously bred by a belief that Russia is what Moscow DOES. To that end, Rubin Kazan’s championship was the best thing that could have happened to the future prospects of this national championship.
Let’s look at the facts: Rubin achieved against the odds.
The nucleus of their side was maintained with Roman Sharonov getting no younger, Macbeth Sibaya still not sprightly and Serhei Rebrov heading for the exit door. Furthermore, they had an angry man in Alejandro Dominguez, motivated by Dick Advocaat’s admonishments and with no idea how that would affect the team dynamic. It was inevitable that the old core of the team would fragment eventually and that will happen now – 16 goals makes Dominguez a wanted man, Aleksandr Bukharov is not short of offers, Sergei Semak likewise even as a fully paid-up member of the veterans’ club and Cesar Navas has been as elegant as he has been imperious at centre-back. But now they will re-recruit as a champion club, representing a region on the map in European football and having made an imprint on the Champions League rather than one perceived by the unwitting as a one-off fluke from an alien state whose only attraction was the zeros added on the end of the rouble pay-cheque.
Rubin’s rebuilding starts here – Spartak’s is underway in essence.
Valeri Karpin is now sufficiently qualified to be the official head coach in 2010 and his task over the winter in Turkey is to iron out the teething troubles in the players that he, himself, has inspired. Pavel Yakovlev and Zhano Ananidze were both left out in the defeat at Zenit in week 30 because of their inability to “defend from the front” but surely there, the weakness lies in the incompatability of Rafael Carioca with the non-Brazilian climate and the lack of fitness of Ibson. How capable are they of spotting defensive sensitivities through the squad? Perhaps, they will follow CSKA’s lead.
The Army Men have grasped the root cause of their problems but could suffer like Rubin for the modern footballing crime of advertising the best of the under-rated talent on a European stage. It would be an astonishing feat for President Evgeni Giner if he retained the services of Milos Krasic, Igor Akinfeev and Alan Dzagoev beyond the mid-point in 2010 but at least they have seen enough to recognise that the back four is largely antiquated; a source of relief when they reached an agreement with FK Moskva for full-back Kirill Nababkin.
Moskva look likely to be looted like the home of a defenceless pensioner in the winter sales. Nababkin’s exit is certain to be followed by Aleksandr Epureanu, Aleksandr Samedov and Dmitri Tarasov, leaving the Citizens – with no gate receipts, no popular support, no European football (yet: they could still make the Europa League if either they or Zenit win the Russian Cup in May) and no feasible business model – as a selling club. So minimal was their pulling power, that even Hector Brakamonte gave up a sure thing in the capital for Chechnya, where he hardly played for Terek Grozny through injury.
Aside from the big boys, the RPL has thrown up some fun individual displays. Shamil Asildarov almost single-handedly pioneered Spartak Nalchik’s reprieve from the drop, few were more exciting than Mersudin Ahmetovic of Rostov and many a Spartak loanee impressed.
But the RPL wouldn’t be the RPL without the experience being bittersweet.
The referees were a shambles, led by a disjointed organisation with a factional leadership. That, in very different circumstances, Almir Kayumov and Nikolay Ivanov, were not in charge of leading matches was an affront to rationality.
The administration was strong enough to speak openly of the match-fixing claims publicly levelled at the match between Terek Grozny and Krylya Sovetov in the summer but the affair left an uneasy taste.
And after all of it, what have the main clubs learnt? Laudrup, Ramos, Sarsaniya, there have been some odd managerial appointments but what can be said for consistency? There is a one-word response to that: Berdiyev.
For Rubin, that’s why they’re champions. And that’s why the Russian Premier-Liga will entice the best players outside of Moscow, as well as inside the capital’s ringroad, in 2010.
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