The loss of a large group of players forces CSKA to build a new team. This is facilitated by the fact that the team has a new head coach. So in the army club, twenty years later, a new historical cycle begins, and in the previous one there was everything: from Russian gold to the UEFA Cup.

Photo: © Clive Mason / Staff / Getty Images Sport / Gettyimages.ru

A big team should treat the departure of a player like Chidera Ejuka as if she were briefly relegated from the top flight, and players who have an easy termination procedure in their contracts for such cases are leaving. Those with whom, it turns out, the big club is globally out of the way are leaving. They were fellow travelers, and now you have to look down on them from the high deck. And, not for long.

What matters is only those who remain – in order to “rise into the big leagues” together again. Fans fall in love with them forever. Only such become part of the club’s history.

The void that is now emerging in the place of last year’s CSKA, firstly, is no longer absolute, since there is Akinfeev, Diveev, Oblyakov and Chalov (and this is a full-fledged vertical axis, backbone), and, secondly, one should already see in it not the absence old and room for the new. And in this sense, it turns out that CSKA just cleared the site for a large construction site.

There is a task to make a new team. And there is a person who is entrusted with this – also a new one. But the construction skills of Vladimir Fedotov have already been tested by working in such different climatic zones as the Orenburg steppe and the Black Sea subtropics. Fedotov is reliable. Pours durable concrete, assembles iron structural elements. Confidently orientated in the properties of the material.

Photo: © Alexey Eremin / Match TV

CSKA needed such a large construction site for a long time. With the previous team, three different coaches with their different sets of strengths failed to win anything. Neither the experience of Goncharenko, nor the fresh look of Olic, nor the deep inner knowledge of Berezutsky’s team worked. Therefore, it was hardly worth hoping that the fourth in a row with special forces and means of cosmetic repairs would return CSKA to the top.

But for a major overhaul, in addition to a clean construction site and an experienced foreman, CSKA has enough opportunities. The first reserve in the current conditions, of course, is the internal one. The team that has nurtured within itself Kuchaev, Maradishvili, Tiknizyan and Chalov has now returned two from this list, but in general should look at the next generation of pupils. Especially against the background of the fact that CSKA has won the youth championship for the last two seasons.

A little worse with the ability to take interesting players from rivals. CSKA, minus the transfer of Maxim Mukhin, which has not yet fully justified itself, has not intercepted players from direct competitors for a long time. He replenished his base at the expense of lower clubs. So once Kazan Akhmetov and Ufa Diveev and Oblyakov became army men. But this direction could be strengthened by Vladimir Fedotov’s ability to work with unclaimed and superfluous people. It was these players, mostly from the Zenit bench, who helped a lot during the formation of Sochi.

And in the foreign market, with all the known limitations, CSKA is still capable of interesting purchases. His winter campaign was perhaps the most interesting in Russia. The army team is still the best choice in the country for Argentines and Brazilians: almost all the most interesting legionnaires from the two main football countries in South America came to CSKA. And almost all the main African stars of the Premier League are the fruits of army selection, from Seydou Doumbia to the already mentioned Ejuke.

But the main resource that CSKA was the first of all our tops to saddle is time. It is high time for everyone to think of the term of our suspension from European competitions as the time allotted for a deep restructuring. The one who takes it first will succeed. CSKA and is taken – for the totality of external and internal reasons. It happens in car racing: your victory was predetermined by the fact that you managed to jump into the box before your competitors to refuel and change tires.

Photo: © RIA Novosti / Alexey Filippov

The departure of the Berezutsky brothers, now from the coaching staff, marks the end of that great life cycle of CSKA that began two decades ago with their arrival as budding defenders. They took overclocking in Zilovsky “Torpedo” and Novorossiysk “Chernomorets”, others, like the current coach of the army “youth team” Gusev or the then scorer Popov, moved to CSKA from other major league clubs.

There was a place for finds like Zhirkov’s Tambov nugget. And, of course, foreign players who have become part of the history of the club – Jarosik, Rahimic, Olic, Carvalho and Vagner Love. It is important that the engine of the new project in that CSKA was the authoritative coach Gazzaev, who knew exactly what he wanted to achieve. His team immediately behaved aggressively both in the selection, and in the playing style, and even in the style of behavior on the field – with opponents and judges.

That newly created CSKA in 2003 for the first time became the champion of Russia. The current CSKA starts the season, which will mark the twentieth anniversary of the first Russian gold. It is unlikely that CSKA can count on anniversary success. But he can use his own championship experience, take advantage of the “first in the boxes” and dispose of the luxury of building an entirely new team. And if the coach still manages to work quietly for two or three years, CSKA can create a team that will consistently claim gold.