Rarely do desires and opportunities coincide so much.
The strangest rumor of this summer: its chief breeder Andrey Movsesyan is leaving CSKA. With the summary that he made for himself in the last year, you need to leave only for Paris Saint-Germain.
Taking into account the winter transitions to the attack group, CSKA at the start of this season was able to close half of the positions in the starting lineup with newcomers. And if everyone from the winter ones played in one way or another (Carrascal withstood a stable level, Yazici gave a bright increase and a noticeable decline, and Medina had already managed to sit on the bench and come back), then the summer acquisitions should also have good chances for adaptation. Moreover, it will be provided by Vladimir Fedotov, who himself is a newcomer to the club, that is, he works from scratch, free from the mistakes accumulated by the system in past seasons.
Photo: © Alexey Eremin / Match TV
Selection, counter-sanctions, limit
Why is CSKA so active in the foreign transfer market? The club has been busy squeezing the last forces out of a small game holder for too long. He used different training methods for the same players. From some point on, CSKA could no longer be called a “family club”, as in the days of Yevgeny Giner’s direct management, but kept a course on trusting his own, including in the choice of coaches, and tried to strengthen pointwise. In the end, the moment came when not just changes, but large-scale changes became inevitable.
The request for something new has become a basic premise. But for such numerous transitions to become possible, other conditions must have been established. Firstly, the winter deals showed that the scouting service’s aim was excellent. Everyone who came, including the later departed Gbamen and Yazici, stood out both against the background of partners and against the backdrop of the league as a whole.
Secondly, CSKA clearly had room for monetary maneuvers after working with a package of club shares, which had to be withdrawn from the sanctions strike. And, thirdly, a new, softer limit from this season (13 foreign players in the application and up to eight on the field) allows CSKA to balance the composition with foreigners.
Jorge Carrascal / Photo: ©
PFC CSKA
He already has enough home-grown players, besides, two consecutive victories in the youth championship make it clear that the army team in the near future can light up very interesting pupils in the main team. And if in the current conditions you can take liquid foreign players to the team, then in the case of CSKA you simply have to do it. Especially if you focus on two key markets for the army team – South American and Serbian.
New Mario and new Terekhov
Each transition separately has its own tactical rationale: CSKA takes players to those positions where there is a lack of them. But first there is a simple consideration of quantity. For example, with the departure of Mario Fernandez, the club simply did not have right-wing players with such endurance, reliability and ability to attack – a consequence of the very “family” approach to recruiting, when individual names of the army team turned into household names: we say “goalkeeper” – we mean Akinfeev . Therefore, such a player was found, Gajic, who would not be a rotation player in this position, but would simply cover it with himself.
Milan Gajic / Photo: ©
PFC CSKA
With a symmetrical position on the left flank, there are more nuances. Brazilian Moises Barbosa from Internacional is preparing to take it. The 27-year-old analogue of Sergei Terekhov, whom Vladimir Fedotov taught to play in such a way that the national team became interested in him. Moises, on the other hand, will play on loan and allow Oblyakov to get rid of the shuttle role. If he fails, Shchennikov is still in the ranks.
In the renovated center of the field – two captains
The center of the field is the center of balance for the entire team. Having parted ways with Maradishvili, Bohinen, Dzagoev, Akhmetov, Bistrovich and Biyol, CSKA had to at least fill the roster with players of this role. The season in the support zone was started by Mukhin, who spent the last year between the field and the bench, and Kuchaev, who played in another club at all. And this is with Fedotov, who in Sochi built a game around the all-metal duet of Tsallags – Noboa! It is clear that the new coach in the center needs players who can be relied upon.
Victor Felipe Mendes in Chile, by the age of 22, had already spent two and a half seasons as a base player and almost without substitutions, earned the captain’s armband in the Union Espanyola club, and made his debut for the first team in December last year. A player with a height of 172 cm scores less often than he receives yellow cards.
Victor Mendez / Photo: ©
PFC CSKA
In CSKA, he will have to automatically work out interactions with another ex-captain – Sasha Zdelar, who wore an armband in Partizan. This is another physically strong and hardy player who is part of the Serbian national football team. And the captain’s status of both newcomers is, firstly, an additional guarantee of their increased playing motivation, and, secondly, the basis for the future captaincy in CSKA.
Argentine and Uruguayan in the center of defense
Fedotov’s team is now using three central defenders as their baseline, and here the need to fill the squad is almost more acute than in the case of the central midfield. When almost 36-year-old Nababkin and the versatile Zainutdinov play next to Diveev, the question arises: is it possible to have at least one more player in the roster, for whom the center of defense is a profile position?
It looks like CSKA is ready to answer positively and even bring the number to two. Argentinean Lisandro Magalian and Uruguayan Joaquin Sosa Romanyuk are rushing to Moscow. But here it remains only to rely on the fact that CSKA knows exactly what it is doing in the market of players from South America. Because while the trajectories of these players do not convince that their careers in Russia will take off.
Magalhaan is 28 years old, he belongs to Ajax, for which he played only two games in the Dutch championship. Although the status ones are against Feyenoord (2:6) and PSV (3:1). Under the defeat of the Rotterdam team, he fell in conjunction with De Ligt, but, unlike his partner, he sat down further in the reserve. And at the end of that season I went to Alaves, and not to Juventus. Neither in Spain nor in Belgium, where he played at Anderlecht last season, Lisandro did not stay long and did not become a solid player in the base. In the scheme with three defenders, he practiced only in the Italian Crotone, where he spent the season before last and received 10 yellow cards.
The second newcomer to the center of defense is a 20-year-old Uruguayan from Liverpool (Montevideo). Joaquin Sosa is tall (189 cm) and, importantly, is left-handed. But how reliable he is, it is not easy to judge by performances for his home club. Liverpool only won their first home trophy in 2020, it is played exclusively by Uruguayans and mostly by young people. To give Joaquin Sosa an exhaustive description could well be the head coach of Liverpool’s rivals, the Cerro Largo club. His name is Hector Bracamonte, and exactly 17 years ago he scored from the transfer of Andrei Movsesyan for the Moscow football club. Moreover, at the gates of CSKA.
