Friendly match of the current champion of Russia against one of — but not the strongest — a Chinese football club could go unnoticed. But at the beginning of 2024, the cards lay in such a way that the meeting at the training camp in Qatar became interesting to the audience.
This became possible at the Equality Cup tournament organized by St. Petersburg Zenit, in which the Brazilian Santos, the Qatari Al-Duhail and the Chinese Shanghai Shenhua took part. The meeting between the Russian and Chinese clubs sparkled with new colors thanks to the arrival of former Russian national team coach Leonid Slutsky to the post of head coach of Shanghai. In the mid-2000s, he managed to train the current head coach of Zenit Sergei Semak at the Moscow football club. After that, the latter was part of Slutsky’s headquarters in the Russian national team. Even before the starting whistle, the teacher and student warmly greeted each other and exchanged a few phrases.
Another link with Zenit’s successful past was striker Serdar Azmun. The forward, whose team failed to reach the final of the Asian Cup taking place these days in Qatar, came to the game and received a warm welcome. For Slutsky, as well as those on his staff, Vasily Berezutsky and Oleg Yarovinsky, a reminder of past victories turned out to be ex-CSKA defender Mario Fernandez, who moved to Zenit last summer. And there were hugs, smiles and friendly pats on the back.
Before the starting whistle, someone could talk about a possible confrontation between coaches Semak and Slutsky, but already in the second minute such talk became inappropriate — newcomer Pedro scored another goal for Zenit at the training camp. “Shanghai Shenhua” resisted, tried to impose counterplay and threaten Denis Adamov’s goal, but by the 60th minute the scoreboard showed depressing numbers of 0:5 for Slutsky. The top scorer of this RPL season, Mateo Cassierra, who a few days ago extended his contract with Zenit, scored a hat-tick.
Before the start of the foreign stage of his career, fans associated Slutsky with emotionality and rhythmic swinging on the coaching bench. After working in England and the Netherlands, the coach became more reserved. This is exactly how Leonid Viktorovich appeared at the tournament in Qatar. Throughout almost the entire match, he paced the technical area, reacting restrainedly to almost everything that happened on the field.
Slutsky’s assistants, Berezutsky and Yarovinsky, were much more active. They tried to shout to the players from the stands of the stadium, which was not very large by recent Qatari standards, and exchanged opinions with the main one. In January, Leonid Viktorovich stated that holding friendly matches against strong opponents, regardless of the result, would be useful for his team. In the match with Zenit, everything turned out exactly like this — a depressing 0:6 and an impressive cup of food for thought.
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