Last summer, Rubin’s departure from the RPL was perhaps the main topic of discussion in the football press. The fans were then divided into two camps: outside observers blamed Slutsky for the historical failure, and Kazan fans tried to protect the head coach from attacks, explaining the team’s failure by external circumstances.

The club’s decision to keep Leonid Viktorovich in office surprised many, but by the beginning of the new season, this hype subsided. The majority seemed to tacitly agree on one thing: if the specialist manages to return the Tatar team to the elite, he can be forgiven for past mistakes.

However, these expectations have not been justified yet. In the First League, “Rubin” does not shine, and Kazan now completely flew out of the Russian Cup in disgrace.

Even the most loyal audience is running out of patience.

“Fire Lyonya from the club”

By the beginning of the season in the First League, Rubin was approaching in the status of an unambiguous favorite. In any case, formally: the club had the most expensive team in the tournament and, accordingly, the largest payroll. And by name, Kazan looked brighter than all their rivals put together: in the summer, Rubin lured several stars of the country’s second division to itself, kept Samoshnikov, Dupin and Bakaev, and even got Dzagoev in addition.

It seemed that in the best league in the world, as many fans ironically call it, this line-up would be out of competition. However, everything turned out to be far from so simple: in the first four matches, Rubin won only one victory, and in the iconic derby with KAMAZ, it only achieved a draw (1:1). Slutsky at the same time insisted that in that match the Kazan team showed “the highest quality football of the season”, as if testing the patience of the fans. By that time, Leonid Viktorovich’s endless “excuses” on social networks had already turned into a meme. Users wondered how the master would explain the failure next time: poor work of the judges, poor quality of the field, inconvenient weather …

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The cup overflowed a month later, when Rubin under the leadership of Viktorych began another black streak. At the end of September, the team unexpectedly lost to Shinnik (0:1), which was then in 11th place in the standings, and dropped out of the coveted top three. And in the next match, Kazan lost at home to a direct competitor in the face of Arsenal (1: 2): Tula went ahead, and Rubin fell to sixth place, already 6 points behind the leader.

After that match, Kazan fans allowed themselves to speak frankly about the work of Slutsky. At the end of the match, the fan tribune charged: “Fire Lenya from the club,” which the coach himself reacted with understanding. “They are right and have the right to do so,” the specialist concluded, but he still did not submit a resignation letter.

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“You can’t pressure me”

However, the really big disappointment, as it turned out, was yet to come. Rubin suffered the third defeat in a row already in the Russian Cup, and it turned out to be, perhaps, the most painful. Arriving to visit Volga at the tiny Trud, yesterday’s Premier League stars suffered a sensational defeat (1:2), leaving the tournament already at the 1/32 final stage. Kazan managed to open an account already in the 1st minute, but the team from Ulyanovsk showed character, breaking the game.

True, the team usually fails to pull off anything like this in the First League. Volga is the absolute outsider of the championship with 6 points after 12 matches and the worst goal difference (-13), so for Rubin to lose to such an opponent is doubly shameful. However, Slutsky had an excuse for this case, although he did not use it in an interview. The coach released the reserve squad for the game – apparently, to give the base a break before an important meeting with SKA in the championship.

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But the fans seem to no longer want to think about the future – at least as long as Slutsky remains at the helm of the team. Fans demand decisions from the club here and now – it was not without reason that the banners “Lenya, goodbye” and “Lenya, goodbye, you are a stranger here” appeared at the game with Volga. In response, the coach just laughed:

– It’s ridiculous, it’s impossible to put pressure on me. I have too much weight in the literal and figurative sense of the word, the specialist joked.

The calmness of Leonid Viktorovich, in fact, is amazing. After all, the bosses of any other club would no longer have any reason to hold on to a coach with similar results. A team with such a line-up and such investments should simply break the First League, but so far we are talking about “dominance” only in post-match interviews. So the phrase “it’s impossible to put pressure on me” in this context, I want to read it differently: press, they say, as much as you like, but you don’t decide here. One can only guess about Slutsky’s agreements with the club’s management – but now they seem to be holding only on personal trust.