Lovchev explained Sobolev's negative attitude towards Spartak management

MOSCOW, August 9, Oleg Bogatov. Forward of Spartak Moscow » Alexander Sobolev saw the attitude of the club's management in the situation with the end of the contract of the long-term team captain and his friend defender Georgy Dzhikia, which could influence his decision to leave the team, said ex-footballer of the «red-whites» and the USSR national team Evgeny Lovchev.
Earlier, a source reported that negotiations between Spartak and St. Petersburg's Zenit on the transfer of 27-year-old Sobolev had reached a dead end. On July 23, the capital club announced that the forward had been suspended from training with the main squad by decision of the management. As part of the «red-whites», defender Dzhikiya, who left the club at the end of the season, played 215 matches, scoring five goals and making 11 assists. He helped Spartak win the championship, the Cup and the Super Cup of Russia once each.

“I don’t know if Sobolev will stay at Spartak. I was brought up by Simonyan and Starostin. And Starostin said: if a person doesn’t want to play for the team, he should be let go. But times were different then, football players weren’t a commodity for which you had to get money. And Roman Zobnin says: if a player doesn’t want to play for the team, he should be let go. And this is Zobnin, who has been with the team for many years and is now the captain, saying. So the players think so too: not all of them, probably, but they think so,” Lovchev said. “On the other hand, this is not at all in support of Sobolev, but as an analysis of the current situation. Sobolev’s closest friend was Georgy Dzhikiya. And what Spartak did to someone who served him faithfully and truly, who was the team captain, they took and killed his career. I don’t know the club’s internal processes and I don’t want to get into them. I look from the outside and I think that a person who gave himself so much «Spartak» cannot be treated like that. Sobolev saw all this, and it did not add to his love for today's management of «Spartak», — the expert emphasized.