Week 17 review

By: j | August 10th, 2008

It was an incredible weekend in the Russian Premier League and hopefully you had a chance to chance some of the matches. It’s going to be quite a stretch run towards the title race with Ruben Kazan maintaining lead with powerhouse Dynamo Moscow in hot pursuit. This is starting to look like a classic battle of the great Moscow clubs, Dynamo, CSKA and Spartak heading straight at Ruben Kazan. I’ll be going over next weeks matches but first the following is a brief recap of the weekends action:

Sunday
CSKA Moscow 4 Saturn Moscow 0
CSKA’s offense came back with a flourish with Vagner Love netting a brace before the thirty minute mark in a completely dominating performance.

Rubin Kazan 4 Zenit St Petersburg 1
A stunning tactical domination of the defending champions that asserts Kurban Berdyyev led Rubin Kazan’s title hopes. Turkish international, Gökdeniz Karadeniz, had a career-day and destroyed the Zenit defense with stunning runs and slick passing. For Zenit, the defense of their title looks bleak now and they face further challenges this week with both Sébastien Puygrenier and Anatoliy Tymoschuk receiving red-cards as well as Dick Advocaat being expelled late.

Dynamo Moscow 1 Amkar Perm’ 0
Spartak Nalchik 2 Terek Grozny 0

Saturday
Spartak Moscow 1 Khimki 1
In a day of upsets, this was a surprise as Spartak looked in control after Roman Pavluchenko goal at the twentieth minute mark. Mozart created a series of brilliant scoring opportunities but finishing was just off the mark and Spartak let Khimki grab the tie when Bosnia and Herzegovina international Dragan Blatnjak, scored with twenty minutes left in the match. Spartak was the aggressor through the match and losing the three points is costly for them.

Samara Kryliya Sovetov 2 Lokomotiv Moscow 0
Luch-Energiya Vladivostok 2 YFK Shinnik Yaroslav 1
FC Moscow 2 Tom’ Tomsk 1