Global purge in Lokomotiv Moscow, legendary team before our eyes he turns into an ordinary middle peasant of the RPL. Sport asks three main questions for club management.
1. Why did Loko lose its entire squad? In recent days, one narrative has been heard from various representatives of the football community: Lokomotiv has never had such a weak squad. Artem Dzyuba, Anton Miranchuk, Maxim Glushenkov, Rifat Zhemaletdinov, Marinato Guilherme, Stanislav Magkeev, Daniil Khudyakov, as well as a number of foreign players — Tin Yedvay, Girano Kerk and Wilson Izidor — have already left the team. This list does not yet include youth who have gone on loan, as well as less significant players. It turns out that Lokomotiv immediately lost more than its entire squad.
And here a whole series of questions arise, and not only to agent Vadim Shpinev, who has caused a lot of bloodshed for the Lokomotiv bosses. It’s interesting to know why competitors bought one of the best players of the season, Glushenkov, for a ridiculous amount? How did it happen that negotiations with your students reached a dead end? Is it possible to limit the influence of agents on Lokomotiv? Why couldn’t it be possible to try to earn at least some money from the departure of legionnaires from the Rangnick era? This list can be continued, and for a very long time.
Perhaps the club tried to somehow compensate for the massive losses? Partly. Finally, the young talent Nikita Saltykov became available, Anton Mitryushkin was invited to compete for a place in goal with Ilya Lantratov, the attack line was enriched with Dmitry Vorobyov, and the center of the field should be strengthened by Artem Timofeev. Has the squad improved its quality, and have these transfers offset the exit transfers? Of course, you want to be wrong, but for now this strategy looks like plugging holes.
Even if we omit the quality factor, the problem of the number of players is even more terrifying. How to go into a season with a busy calendar, when there is no diversity at all in several positions, and others will be covered by yesterday's juniors? Strengthening is not just desirable, it is vital. And even if several newcomers appear in the coming days, it will take a significant amount of time to integrate the players who missed the bulk of the summer training camp. All this does not at all seem like the basis for success.
2. The task is not to be relegated to the First League? Now it’s difficult to be Mikhail Galaktionov. Just recently you were fighting for medals at the Russian Championship, but now you don’t understand how to put together a combat-ready team from this lineup, ready to score at least some points. I don’t want to think that the interim results of the transfer window are a statement of the gap between managers and the coaching staff. If we ignore the fact of disagreements between the Cherkizov Towers, we get an even stranger picture — the head coach was initially warned about the global restructuring and gives his consent to it, and without a guarantee of adequate replacements. Well, this is pure professional murder!
Talking about a place in the top three is simply ridiculous at the moment. To outline the task with the vague wording “top eight” is to officially remove Lokomotiv from being a contender for trophies and the highest places. Surely this will not be done, because it will be too sharp and painful parting with illusions. Most recently, Loko won RPL gold and also won several Russian Cups, so the club is interested in cooling the negative background as much as possible. There are obviously few reasons for optimism, which means that managers can adopt the most vague formulations in anticipation of some miracles from the team. Will these miracles take place, given that Galaktionov is not a magician?
3. Is the new perestroika a harbinger of financial collapse? From the outside, the current situation at Loko looks like a spontaneous sale in a store that is about to be liquidated. In addition to the above exit transfers, the club may soon lose captain Dmitry Barinov, who is negotiating with the Spanish Alaves. There are also persistent rumors about a desire to sell the country's main young talent, Sergei Pinyaev. What is this if not the desire to get at least some money, but right here and now?
It’s interesting that people who sympathize with Lokomotiv have already developed immunity to rumors about economic problems. There was a noisy audit of the work of Ilya Gerkus, his replacement Vasily Kiknadze admitted that there was only “three rubles” for transfers (three million — approx.), and the consequences of the arrival and departure of the German brigade led by Ralf Rangnick are still being sorted out. Add to this the modern realities in which the country and all domestic sports live, which are heavily dependent on government subsidies.
Could it be that Lokomotiv is slowly losing its status as an important social project, becoming ballast? Russian Railways, even in the most difficult times, did not give up on «social programs», investing more than five billion rubles annually in the club, but now — and this is obvious to everyone — there is almost no money for «entertainment», and it is desirable to stay at the top of the RPL standings. It is quite possible that the restructuring of the team with an emphasis on academy graduates is part of a long-planned concept of transferring Lokomotiv to the rails of self-sufficiency. It is unlikely that there is anything bad in this, but it is desirable to talk about it honestly and openly. And then, perhaps, investors will catch up.
The quintessence of everything that is happening was the scandal with the improvement of the territory in front of the home stadium. Photos of fresh asphalt, which replaced several green lawns and ancient trees, simply blew the public away. People sincerely did not understand why the project was not presented in advance, why it was necessary to cut down trees and, most importantly, who is responsible for this. When fans came to a friendly match with Kaliningrad's Baltika, they saw an empty, grey square, without a hint of hospitality. Of course, by the start of the season, everything will change and take on a new life, but people have already noticed that the new look of the square reminds them of Lokomotiv itself, which is slowly, quietly and methodically being paved over with asphalt. Will the club be able to break through it in its new guise?
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