Glitter and dirt from the Gazprom Arena. Where is Zenith, there is a scandal

DEAR-RICH?

I love Peter very much. There are a lot of friends and acquaintances, in general there are amazing hotels and restaurants and just sights – other capitals will not collect so much in total. One thing is strange – a lot of complexes. Complexes that interfere with life.

Coming out of the building of the Moscow railway station, you traditionally come across the inscription on the house opposite: “The Hero of the City of Leningrad”. And this annoying reminder is everywhere. As often as you come across dirt on the sidewalks of Nevsky Prospekt.

The cup in the Zenit stadium is undoubtedly the most beautiful in the country. Informed people once told me how much the lighting, sound and roll-out camp cost here. Money was constantly allocated for this, since Alexei Miller personally supervised everything.

– And here is the sub-tribute – shit. Why doesn’t Alexey Borisovich go there, – add the same knowledgeable people.

The stadium is beautiful, the metro is two hundred meters away, but as far as it goes to the Gazprom Arena – feeling of building work going on. Fences, fences, fences. After the match, I went out the shortest way to the subway – it turned out that I had to walk one and a half kilometers (!) Along the fence, so that I could walk the same one and a half kilometers along the fence back side of the fence. Maybe the guys from St. Petersburg should drive up to Dynamo once and see how it is organized in Moscow? Just a pity.

IT’S EASIER TO ASSEMBLE WITHOUT A FAN-ID HOLDER

In St. Petersburg, they set the task of gathering 45,000 spectators in the stands. Judging by the overcrowding at the Zenit station and the approaches to the stadium more than an hour before the match, it is clear that work in this direction has clearly been done. And if you pay attention to the incomprehensible views, where exactly to go, some of them were here for the first time.

– Do you have free tickets? – I am interested in my mother with an elementary school-age fool.

– We were distributed at work …

It’s clear…

The reshuffles of the songs from The King and the Jester cheer up the climb up the uncomfortable stairs of the street.

Photo source: Evgeny Asmolov / FC Zenit

The stadium is not only distinguished by the lack of intelligible navigation (volunteers spent 15 minutes looking for an elevator to take me to sector C49), but also surprised me with an indistinct sound.

Before the kick-off, the entire fan sector chants: “We don’t need a fan ID”. The stadium drowns out their chants with music. The sector does not stand still, so even when Zenit concedes a goal named after Vasyutin in the middle of the first minute, the stands do not react to the goal, but chant another slogan: “Fan-aide – soccer killer.

KRASAVA KUKULYAK

Nice judge. Before playing in a flash interview, she promised:

– I will do my best to make the game interesting.

Here, it turns out, with what mission they go to the field to boo!

The referee, by the way, managed to be in the spotlight almost immediately. After a 16th-minute collision of two players, he called for medics with a slow wave of his hand. While the medics were running from band to band, the players had already left the grass, and the referee blew his whistle to continue the game. At the same time, Kukulyak somehow did not pay attention to the fact that a medical team was still in the center of the field.

Midway through the second half it became clear what the referee had in mind, promising an interesting match. He hasn’t seen a clean penalty (kick on Tukavin’s leg) since the game, then he listened to something in his ear for three (!) minutes, watched replays for two minutes (!) and finally showed that there was no rigor.

Photo source: FC Dynamo (Moscow)

Kukulyak decided for himself – let there be a technical error. Who does not commit this with a score of 1:1, but if Gazprom is punished with a kick of 11 meters at this score, this is already an ideological mistake. And this in our country – well, you can’t afford it. Plus – a decrease in class, salary (referees live on fees for games), etc.

At that moment, everyone gathered in the Dynamo box (and the head of the celebrity department Sabina Shokh traditionally cordially invited both actress Agnia Shilovskaya and blogger Yulia Godunova, Vlad A4’s girlfriend) had only one question: “Zenith”, not Is it a sin to receive titles like this?

A few minutes later a new “movement” began. – after Daler Kuzyaev received a yellow card in the 79th minute, the Internet began to boil with information that it was already the second and for some reason it was not removed. True, we could not remember the first one, but the RFU website stubbornly shone with two “mustard plasters”. As it turned out a little later, the administrators of the text broadcast “listened” to the match played by Georgy Cherdantsev on TV, where he spoke about the yellow card in the 29th minute.

Photo source: Vyacheslav Evdokimov / FC Zenit

God, what level has our football economy reached! The RFS inadvertently gives instructions to the TV commentator and the umpires do the dirty work on the pitch.

Kukulyak is a special story. There, all the accumulated background is such that it will not seem enough. The last time a match involving Dynamo was refereed by Yevhen Kukulyak was in October 2021. Samara lost 0:1 at home and Zakharyan fell in the penalty area in the second half. Kukulyak did not award a penalty, the ESC admitted the mistake (by the way, the situation is similar in this match with Tyukavina, a blow to the back of the leg).

Six months earlier, Eugene worked on the Dynamo match – Chemki. Still 0:1, and with the score 0:0, the referee did not award the guests a penalty in the 79th minute. ESC then admitted the same mistake.

And now a year and a half has passed, and Kukulyak has returned to the match with the participation of Dynamo. And how he came back! So it would be better never to come back. For such frills, for such wobbly legs in front of the monitor, on which Gazprom is written in large letters – just a lifetime suspension from arbitration. No options!

MILLER NUMBER ONE

Dynamo proved to be a team. For the first time this calendar year. If in the first half it still seemed that it was Zenit who played impressively with full legs – just enough to win in the end in the class, then in the second half the situation completely changed: the blue-and-whites pushed St. Petersburg like a puppy’s nose to the floor. And miraculously, they didn’t win from the game.

Penalties are traditionally a game of nerves, but then it was Leschuk’s time. Two reflex shots and Dynamo knocked out Zenit. If, of course, Kukulyak said that Zenit hit 5 and Dynamo – 4, then the hosts would still have chances. But the judge has finally come to this point.

Photo source: FC Dynamo (Moscow)

Ahead was still a many-kilometer path to the metro, and at the exit through the VIP parking I ran into a meeting at the car of Alexei Miller, where a very overgrown Sergey Fursenko was reporting something to the head of Gazprom. At that point it was forty minutes left in the game. Apparently, this shame greatly hurt the local leadership. Or maybe in this confusing grid of the cup – “The RPL Path”, “The Path of Regions” – they were looking for options: the path of the capitals, the path of the bolt or some other path. Well, can’t Zenit fly to nowhere on its own territory, where he and his bosses can do everything, just like that?

After an impromptu meeting, Miller went to get into his car. On the back of his sweater was the number “1” proudly displayed. As the hero of the film “Pokrovsky Gates” said, “Complexes, complexes, complexes …”