We found out why Russian soccer players turn out to be late.

Premier Media League of Russian football

The off-season football bores you and puts you in a dark mood, especially this year when the legionaries are running away from RPL following the president, who only lasted seven months in the boss’s chair. For the foreseeable future, Russian football will be more focused on internal resources, which, frankly, are not without flaws.

And the point is not only in overrated contracts with low requirements, but also within leagues and leagues. There are simply no competitive conditions conducive to progress, so Russian football is essentially an imitation of professional football, with all the external attributes (money, stadiums, fans, press), but without a reliable sporting backbone.

Not everyone likes the growing popularity of football blogs, personally I don’t find the strength or interest in myself to follow the ups and downs of the media league, where the public is attracted by the openness of the participants, the scandals, the intrigues. , from the investigation and uproar of talent. But if you think about it, then RPL neither better nor worse: there is also very little football here (cool matches on the scale of a single league), but an understandable setting and favorite characters, whose development (or degradation) is curious to watch.

Climate + transition to the autumn-spring system = little time for football

When Leonid Slutsky called Russia a “non-football country”, many took up arms against the then popular and successful manager. But where is Slutsky wrong? Russia is not a football country even from a purely climatic point of view. How many months a year can you comfortably play outdoor football? At best, nine, if we talk about the central part of Russia, there is no such luxury in the east and north.

It is difficult to achieve success in sport if you are inactive for a quarter of a year, you are left without competitive practice. And, unfortunately, the issue isn’t limited to the winter quarter of the year. There are advantages to the transition to the autumn-spring system, I like the synchronization with the European calendar and the fact that the championship starts and ends on good fields. A huge downside is a one and a half to two month summer break between two tournaments.

The winter break is forced, but the summer break is artificial. Valuable time is wasted with favorable weather conditions, players go on vacation for the second time in a year. Considering that December, January and February are canceled from the calendar, from March to November it is necessary to play without interruption and it turns out that Russian football works 7 months out of 12 of the year. And it is level RPLin FNL the winter break lasts 3.5 months, FNL-2 – for 4.5. Playing football for six months, you can only become a semi-football player, only a few of the masses will become full-fledged masters – super talents and fanatics of their craft.

But there were strong teams and athletes. What has changed?

Paradoxically, but the key change that caused many negative consequences was the emergence of professional football in Russia. Or rather, as we have already agreed, its imitations. True professional football cannot be active only for seven of the twelve months of the year, because it is impossible to remain professional in any activity that requires deep immersion and careful preparation, engaging it according to such an imposing calendar. Private clubs are another attribute of professional sports that we are deprived of. This is not what we are talking about now, but it is a feature.

On the one hand, the footballing profession gives its happy owners the right to do what they love, and on the other hand, it makes them hostage to a corrupt system that slows down progress. A professional can only practice his profession in a club that pays him a salary. Amateur footballers from USSR, who reached the finals of international tournaments and won the European Championships and the Olympics, had the opportunity to remain athletes all year round, playing hockey or otherwise in theaters in the winter. Professional footballers cannot go beyond the description of their job; furthermore, under the contracts they do not have the right to receive game drills outside their teams and to play other sports.

Russian footballers have a serious lack of playing experience

In order not to be unfounded, I will give an understandable and eloquent example. In fact, thoughts on this matter emerged after studying the statistics on Bakaev’s career, who is celebrating his 26th birthday today. In the summer Zelimkhan moved from Spartak to Zenit, this high profile transfer generated many opinions, regrets and outraged exclamations. The general significance is that, within the Russian football coordinate system, Bakaev is a valuable player, talent and candidate for the Russian national team.

At the same time, at the age of 26, Bakaev has only 134 games at the highest level for clubs (we do not take into account the youth teams of Spartak and Due) and 12 games for the Russian national team. In total, there are less than 150 games and around 9,000 minutes of play. Let’s solve it: a professional footballer who has lived in the world for a whole 26 years, who is highly regarded in Russia, has 100 complete games at the highest level, if you convert the minutes played into full games.

You can choose your own example, but I took Diogo Jota for comparison. The Portuguese is comparable in status to Bakaev in his football coordinate system and will turn 26 in December. Jota has 300 clubs and 26 appearances for a total of approximately 22,000 minutes of play. Everyone agrees that the experience in football is not determined by age, but by the time spent on the training fields and especially in official matches. Thus, we can say that Zhota has more than double Bakaev’s experience, although he is six months younger.

And if you take a child prodigy like Jude Bellingham, it turns out that by the age of 19 he has already played more than the top Russian footballer in 26 – 11,000 minutes of play against 9,000. And we don’t take into account the quality and quantity of training, we don’t compare the level of competition in the team and the endurance in the games played. They say that Russian soccer players turn out to be late, and here’s why: due to little competitive and training practice, our players often only gain as much experience at the age of 25-26 as their successful counterparts from the countries. football players are 20 -21 years old. Such a backlog can no longer be regained.