“Playing against Las Palmas is more difficult than playing against Zenit.
Admit it, even the most notorious critics of Russian football did not expect to hear such words? Arsen Zakharyan left the RPL for the First Division just a month ago, but he is already ready to pronounce a death sentence on our league. What else can you call it if, according to the footballer, it is more difficult to play against the outsider of the Spanish championship, who has not won a single match in five initial rounds, than against the Russian champion?
Zakharyan shared his impressions about the move to Real Sociedad
According to the Transfermarkt website, the total value of the Las Palmas players is 49 million euros, and Zenit, for the second, almost 156 million. The Spanish outsider’s most expensive player is Máximo Perrone (10 million), on loan from Manchester City, and there is no one more expensive than 5 million. The St. Petersburg team has the most liquid asset Wendel (24 million), four players cost more than 10 million and five or more, 11.
RIA Novosti
Of course, there will always be patriots who will cite the example of the USSR, where sport seemed to develop well even in conditions of isolation. However, this is a topic for a long and complete article, in which many counterarguments can be listed and many nuances mentioned, so we will not touch on this now.
Let’s focus on the most important thing: isolation in modern realities inevitably leads to delay. Furthermore, the biggest problem lies in the fact that we ourselves may not even realize the catastrophic magnitude of this phenomenon. How can we realize this if Russian teams do not participate in European competitions and cannot directly compare their level with foreign ones?
The same applies to the national team. We put the boring goalless draws against Tajikistan and Uzbekistan down to a lack of motivation. Lack of victories and a very weak match against Iran, Qatar and the Egyptian youth team? Well, again, these are just control matches, why react to them with so much pain, right?
Although serious bells are heard with all their might: either our players are surprised by the speed at which one of the weakest teams of the last World Cup, Qatar, plays, or the head coach of the national team, Valery Karpin, is already Al Openly saying that Alexander Golovin is head and shoulders above all other players and therefore we have to go to Europe, now Zakharyan claims that it is more difficult to play with an outsider in the league than with the Russian champion.
Photo: Mikhail Shapaev / RFU
And when all this is added to the disgusting quality of our team’s play in friendly matches, you understand how quickly we began to fall behind the rest of the world in football terms. But even before that we did not occupy particularly strong positions: we only watched the Champions League playoffs on very rare holidays, Zenit regularly beat clubs like Brugge and Austria with great results, and against Topov it looked like a scapegoat.
The only way to avoid catastrophic consequences is when all that remains is to point fingers at each other, wanting to shift responsibility to someone else, admitting the existence of such an unpleasant situation. And he starts working on it right now. First, try to minimize negative consequences during isolation. Second, recognize that the first few years after returning will be difficult, roll up your sleeves to prepare for the hard work, and avoid populist, slogan-like buzzwords as much as possible.
Arsen Zakharyan explained why he preferred to go to Real Sociedad and not to Chelsea
You have to be prepared for difficulties. Then all together we can overcome them in one way or another. And if everyone starts trying to blame everyone else, then our football won’t have a very bright future.
