Russia vs Malta: new location, new coach

The 2022 World Cup Qualifying match between Russia and Malta will be held on 7 September in Moscow. A lot has happened since the last time the two teams met in March, including the appointment of a new head coach for the Russian team

Recently, the Russian Football Union (RFU) was forced to change the location of the return match against Malta, planned for 7 September, from Volgograd to Moscow. The reason for that was the pandemic. Since the Maltese spectators did not manage to discover a new location this time, it makes sense to describe in a nutshell the situation with soccer in the city of Volgograd. When a European team goes to play in Russia, its fans are likely to think that their players will come to Moscow, St Petersburg or Sochi. So why is a city like Volgograd a soccer city? At least because it’s a southern “millionaire” (15th place by population in the Russian Federation), where people love soccer. According to the recollections of the old-timers, soccer was played here during the tsars’ reign. Interesting to learn that the first name of the city was Tsaritsyn, named after the tsar. Later Stalin renamed it after himself; the city of Stalingrad (if you translate it literally, it would be The City of Stalin). During World War II, the battle for Stalingrad was one of the key battles of the Soviet Union. Twenty years ago, in 2001, a war movie about snipers with Rachel Weiss, Jude Law, and Ralph Fiennes, Enemy at the Gates, was released about these events.

Currently, the city has an international level stadium for 45,000 spectators, built for the last World Cup. The Volgograd Arena was the scene of four World Cup matches, including the England-Tunisia match. In the 1990s, the Volgograd team Rotor performed well in the top league of the national championship. Not many people remember it now, but in 1995,

Rotor faced Manchester United in the UEFA Cup and won by an away goal against David Beckham’s team. Managers tried to build a European-level team, but the club, as well as the city, had a difficult fate. In the 2000s, the team had problems: it wasn’t functioning for a while and then they made a new version of Rotor on the same base. This year the club was relegated from the Russian Premier League and its stadium was recently deprived of its Maltese guests.

As a result, the match between Russia and Malta will take place at Spartak’s home stadium. Spartak is probably the most popular soccer club in Russia. The young mother of the younger children of team owner Leonid Fedun, Zarema, was allowed to manage the team, hire and appoint coaches and buy players. She joined (and demonstratively resigned soon after) the team’s board of directors (without informing her husband of this decision, as believed), which drew attention to the former beauty contestant of a radio station. Many of her actions, as well as her leadership style and degree of candor about influencing her civilian husband, seemed extravagant to the team’s fans (and there are entire dynasties of them in Russia as the club prepares to celebrate its 100th anniversary). For example, both soccer fans and Moscow society ladies read enthusiastically Zarema’s correspondence with the club manager, where she expressed the opinion that for success in Spartak the coach must have a letter “R“in his name, otherwise, he just won’t take root; also she reflected on the appropriate zodiac sign for the coach. Some conservative fans disagree with the extent of the girl’s influence on the team’s management and a group of veteran players even wrote an appeal to the club’s main (oil) sponsor. To which another group of veterans published a response letter supporting the club’s owners. Roughly speaking, the one who pays is the one who makes the calls.

And in general, soccer in Russia has recently moved beyond sports, becoming an object of public attention at the expense of non-sports activities. That is why the host of a predominantly female entertainment YouTube channel persistently repeats the question to a representative of a state sports channel (also a woman): “why are there so many scandals in Russian soccer?” Perhaps this is evidence of the growing popularity of the sport and a detailed study of the divorces and sins of the players simply sublimates the desire of the audience to see their teams higher in the world rankings. Right now, according to the FIFA rankings, the Russian national team occupies 41st place. In the UEFA coefficient table, Russia is still in the top 10, though, closing it.

Nevertheless, hope for future victories is growing with the new head coach of the national team. Valery Karpin replaced Stanislav Cherchesov immediately after the European Championship, which many critics and fans considered unsuccessful. Although they unofficially say that the resignation was caused not largely by the team’s performance at the tournament, as by the final press conference in which Cherchesov did not recognise the team’s defeat as a problem. “The new coach of the national team, Valery Karpin, will undoubtedly restructure the game of the Russian team in a new way, abandoning the archaic schemes of his predecessor,” comments Alexander Kobelyatsky, a journalist, who works with the main sports media holding company. He believes that the call up to the national team of Cheryshev and Golovin, who play in Spain and France, as well as the experienced Smolov, whom Stanislav Cherchesov did not like, indicates that the emphasis will be placed on high-speed attacks. However, the coach has no time at all to make connections in the team the way he would like. “In fact, the national team will play from scratch,” the journalist concludes. The RFU management has clearly voiced the goal set for Karpin, which is for the national team to reach the final stage of the World Championship in Qatar. The extension of the coach’s contract depends on it. The contract is valid until the end of the year, and in case of success, it will be automatically extended until March 2022. “It seems to me that even in the case of failure, but with a good quality performance, the RFU will try to keep Karpin longer. First of all, for the reason that the choice among domestic specialists is extremely limited, while inviting a specialist from abroad in the past was accompanied by serious reputational and financial risks,” believes Kobelyatsky.

Fans and journalists believe that reforms are coming: a complete abolition of the limit for foreign players and a reorganisation in the professional leagues are on the agenda. Officials are also thinking of dividing the competition into two phases: a round-robin tournament and a playoff series, with the country’s best clubs fighting among themselves for honours and the worst clubs fighting for a place in the elite. However, not everyone reads the path chosen by the Russian Football Union as all-encompassing. In addition to the spectacular and commercial components of the competition, there’s a need to nurture new generations of players. Journalists are suggesting to the officials: we need to pay close attention to youth soccer, raise the salaries of children’s coaches and create new tournaments in age groups.

Both the new coach and the Russian national team, in terms of the tasks set, must seriously approach the game on 7 September. Igor Vladimirov, the press officer of the Russian team, believes that Malta, in the previous games, showed itself as an organised unyielding team. “You can see the coaching hand of the Italian specialist, the players showed themselves trained, motivated and professional athletes. I am sure that many opponents will have a difficult time in matches with the team of Malta, but we will be satisfied only with a winning score. We do not talk about the number of goals scored since forecasting is a thankless activity. The main thing is to win. All that matters is how confident it will be, and how it will be achieved.” The match will be anything but a walkover for the Russians; the team’s commitment will be at its most serious, the Russian team players promise.

Valery Karpin