Alexander Kerzhakov / Photo: © FC Zenit
The ex-football player of the Russian national team, Zenit, Dynamo, Sevilla, as well as the former head coach of PARI NN, Alexander Kerzhakov, said that the transfer policy of the Nizhny Novgorod team did not correspond to the level of the RPL.
Kerzhakov left PARI NN at the end of the 2021/22 season, keeping the club in the top division. Information appeared in the media that this happened due to a conflict with the leadership of the team.
– Recently, in Torino, the head coach and sports director fought over transfers. Have there been moments in PARI NN when anger boiled up in you and you were close to the same act?
— No, but it was enough for me a small amount of time to understand the qualifications of this specialist, — said Kerzhakov Metaratings.ru.
— How would you rate the transfer policy of PARI NN during your work at the club? Was there an opportunity to defend the purchase of Nikita Krivtsov and other players whom you wanted to invite before the management? Or did they understand that there was no chance of this?
– I understood that it would not be possible to sign Krivtsov. I was provided with lists of possible candidates for the team from the sports director, and then I realized how low the level of his qualifications for working in the RPL. I no longer had anything in common with him and realized that in this direction we definitely did not go along the way. To complete the task that was set before us, he certainly was not my assistant.
– Can you imagine a situation where in any team you clash with the sports director because of the transfer policy?
– It is hard to say. I could not even imagine that such a situation is possible in the Serie A team. But in general, everything can be in life, there is nothing predictable in it. That’s what life is for. It seems to me that in order to achieve results and develop the club, the sports director and the coach must work together.
At the end of July, at the training camp in Austria in Torino, the head coach Ivan Jurich had a serious quarrel with the sports director of the club, Davide Vagnati. It almost came to a fight. Juric accused the manager of Torino’s lack of new transfers.
At the moment, PARI NN is in 13th place in the WORLD RPL standings with 2 points.