Russian Dispatch: Week 28 – Spartak Self-Destruction Gifts Rubin The Title

Spartak’s attempt to end the title drought dating back to 2001 took an unexpected and dramatic blow on Saturday. Valery Karpin’s delightful young team has won five in a row, scoring 18 goals in the process, but that run ended with a 2-1 defeat in Samara.

Spartak have a couple of very difficult fixtures remaining in the last two weeks, against CSKA and Zenit, both of whom are fighting for European qualification, but three points against Samara were almost taken for granted. The hosts’ interest in the league ended a long time ago, and they were involved in a number of suspicious games during the season, notably the 2-3 loss at Terek Grozny. Nobody imagined something might go wrong for Karpin, but Spartak pushed the self-destruction button in a very spectacular fashion.

Eleven minutes after the start, a seemingly harmless free-kick by Anton Bober from the left was turned into his own net by hapless Austrian defender Martin Stranzl.

Three minutes later, disaster struck again.

A similarly simple ball from Bober from exactly the same spot avoided Stranzl this time, but was dropped over the line by goalkeeper Soslan Dzhanaev. The 22-year-old was having a dream debut season in the first team, and has even been compared to the legendary Rinat Dasaev. But, on Saturday, another former Spartak keeper came to mind, namely Aleksandr Filimonov, who dropped a free-kick by Andrey Shevchenko into his own net 10 years ago, costing Russia qualification for Euro 2000.

For Karpin, that was certainly some kind of deja-vu – he was the scorer for Russia in that fateful game against Ukraine, robbed of being promoted to national hero by that dreadful goalkeeping mishap three minutes from time. Filimonov never recovered from the blunder, and his highly promising career was finished there and then. One hopes that Dzhanaev possesses a stronger mentality and will not be affected by his terrible mistake forever.

After such a shock in the beginning, Spartak huffed and puffed for the rest of the game, but never really came close, until Alex’s shot was deflected into the net in the stoppage time. If you are a weird statistics freak, you may as well consider it the third own goal in the game.

“They thought it will be an easy game,” laughed Jiri Jarosik, formerly with Chelsea and Celtic, now enjoying life in Samara.

Rubin made the most of their rivals’ slip, winning 2-0 away to CSKA in Luzhniki on Sunday. The Tatarians were on the defensive for most of the game, scoring with their only two shots on target. Spanish defender Cesar Navas got the crucial one after 66 minutes, with a little touch from Alejandro Domingues’ free-kick. Aleksandr Bukharov netted his 16th goal of the season in the last minute, with an audacious lob over Igor Akinfeev from 40 meters out.

That was an achievement of historic proportions – the first ever win for Rubin against CSKA. What’s more, they took sweet revenge for no less than three defeats against the Army club earlier this season – in the league, in the Cup Final and in the Super Cup. Now Rubin enjoy a four-point lead over Spartak, and can make the title official in their next game versus Zenit in Kazan. Their last match is at relegation candidates Kuban. Two points from those games will be enough, since Rubin have an advantage over Spartak in the head-to-head record.

Kuban, though, could still pose a threat, as FK Moscow found out on Saturday. The small club from the capital were considered favourites to finish third, having beaten Zenit last week. FK played a great first half at Kuban, scoring two team goals of supreme quality and missing at least twice as many. They came to rue that after the break, as the outsiders made a glorious comeback to take a 3-2 lead. Alexei Rebko, called into the national team ahead of World Cup play-off games against Slovenia, completed his brace three minutes from time and salvaged a point for the Moscovites.

Zenit, easy 2-0 winners against Terek in St Petersburg, are now on 50 points in third place, but are still facing a difficult task of staying there, since they have to play Rubin and Spartak in their final fixtures.

Lokomotiv are forth, level with FK Moscow on 48, thanks to a very late dramatic winner from Dmitry Sychev at home versus Amkar Perm (1-0). Poor CSKA have only 46 points and face Spartak in their next game, which could prove a sad occasion for both teams.

Michael Yokhin, Goal.com