The two main themes of Russian football converged in Rostov, where Lokomotiv signing Artem Dzyuba scored a hat-trick against the team of “sworn friend” Valery Karpin. In the stadium that hosted the World Cup, where there was celebration, goodwill and friendship, now the wind blows. The stands gathered less than five thousand spectators, this is about 10% of the capacity of the arena. Moreover, people sat in deathly silence, and children should have been banned from watching the broadcast, because now the whole country knows how football players on the field communicate with coaches and staff on the sidelines. By the way, now we will have to amend the law on the fight against obscenities.
But even these silent and silent spectators made themselves felt three times with a whistle after Dzyuba’s goals. Someone from the outside may be surprised at how much this footballer is hated among the fans. After all, he is a true scorer, 150 goals in the RPL, until recently leader of the national team and co-author of the wonders of the home World Cup. But here I will repeat what I put in the title: there are more important things than football.
Somewhere I read a very broad definition of Dziuba – “toxic”. It’s really toxic, and above all because in football he loves himself more than football. What prevents him from loving himself, the footballer eliminates it. Everyone remembers how the fans were taken to the police after the chants about Dziuba, how before that he was frightened after the whistle of the fans who arrived in San Marino, where the Russian national team showed a very sad game. That’s exactly why, I’m sure, that home video saw the light of day. Fans love any footballer not for goals and assists. They don’t love the numbers and score on the scoreboard, but because he is a personality.
Nothing prevented Dzyuba after his scoring extravaganza in Rostov from going out and supporting fans who oppose fan-ID to go to football and watch, among other things, Lokomotiv. Now Dzyuba is in a team that is respected, and what the new management team has done in a short time inspires not only respect, but confidence that the club is definitely worthy of maintaining a residence permit in the elite. And the team, of course, thinks about the image. This means that you can also re-educate the football community as an unloved, but talented football player.
But let’s go back to Dziuba’s statements after the game: it didn’t even occur to him to support the fans, because he only thought of himself. Therefore, he only talked about how he charges from the hate of wrongdoers to score goals.
But I also thought about the fact that Dzyuba, without a normal training period, without training camps, after a resounding failure in Turkey, enters the field in a team that is still in the play-off zone, and scores three goals to one of the leaders of the RPL. It is clear that the football player had an emotional surge, a motivation to prove something to Karpin, and indeed there are such moments in the life of every football player. Oleg Salenko once scored five goals in a World Cup match, but I barely remember his last name. After Dzyuba’s hat-trick, I wondered: how sharply our RPL level fell in six months! And if Dziuba continues along the same lines, then it will be possible to imagine how far we are from Turkey, which is not at the top. There is a certain amount of arbitrary comparison, but the level is really dropping!
Soon, as you understand, it should become even lower. What we saw on TV in the first round of the RPL in 2023 could be called a funeral procession – football was buried. Fewer people attended Spartak football than hockey in the KHL regular season, and there was the same silence in the stands as in Rostov.
However, “Zenith” gathered 19 thousand spectators, which is even less than half of the total capacity of the arena, but the collection methods still managed to add humiliation to the fans. They have already been humiliated by the fact that no one can explain why you need to get a fan ID, and then the richest club in Russia added free cold sausages, popcorn and a Pepsi-Cola parody. The meaning of the action was such that if you do not want to come to football with a fan ID, then come with this document for free food.
But that is not all! Not only that, according to media reports, state employees of sports schools in St. Petersburg were strongly recommended to attend football, but the “Virazh” was previously replaced by “fans” for 1,000 rubles. , and now they have become 500 rubles. . That is, he proposes to learn chants, rinse his throat, attend a match, shout there and get five thousand rubles at the box office. But it did not work out … Eyewitnesses say that the frightened drummers stood on the stands, no one heard them, they did not shout to the beat or even not to the beat, so they had to hastily turn on the internode. Interestingly, at the same time, the “Virage” was hung with some kind of banner.
The only thing the viewer is likely to praise Zenit for is the internode. At least, it wasn’t heard on the mat broadcast from the field or the curb.
Imagine a situation: before, tickets and season tickets were bought for that Zenit, that is, the fans brought money to the club. Now we have to attract some random people with food and 500 rubles, that is, spend money on filling the stands. The fans who want to go are replaced by those who don’t want to, but have to “work”. After all, this is an absolute classic of such a genre as surrealism.
Judging by private conversations with the club authorities, they understand this, but nevertheless they lure fans with cold sausages and raffle cars, as if it were a “Field of Miracles” with Leonid Yakubovich, and not football. This program and football have a different audience. And this, unfortunately, neither the authors nor the executors of the law on fan-ID understand.
The most popular thing I heard from the powers that be, with whom I discussed this innovation: we don’t know why this is necessary, but is it hard for all of you to get it? First, it’s hard. The 70-year-old receiving fans complain to me that they can’t do anything, in the provincial clubs they say they have lost fans from the villages, because it is not easy for them to travel to register, and the veterans of the fan movement may not even have smartphones . Second, there is no answer to the question “Why have I been going to football without a fan ID since 1987 and now I have to?” replace with popcorn and a discount at the grocery store. It is simply not possible, it humiliates and makes the authors of such ideas as toxic as Dzyuba himself.
Now the choice is obvious to everyone: either football, that is, real, spectacular and even profitable, or fan-ID. Even if it was theoretically possible to combine it before, now so much firewood has already been broken that it will not work to regain and restore trust between football officials, clubs and fans. Well, they will go to the Medialiga, the first and second league, to women’s football, where, consequently, the attendance will be higher than that of the RPL. That is, if the authors of the idea of fan-ID were guided by the desire to get rid of the fan subculture, then it will not work. You can only get rid of it with football. Although, say, hockey and basketball, the fan-ID has not yet arrived, which means that its centers will still live. But no football.
