Keep your suitcase open. Strange resignations in Russian soccer

The days when a coach at a soccer club was a creature the management prayed for are gone. Today he is expendable material: other clubs change two or three specialists per season. What kind of game structure and creative teams are they talking about! If only they could score enough points to keep their place on the coaching bench...

For example, Konstantin Beskov, who instilled that very trademark style in Spartak, had worked with the team for eleven years and only twice took the league title. In addition, he was a willful man who was in constant smoldering confrontation with team manager Nikolai Starostin. However Starostin was a man of soccer culture and a patient one, who understood that Beskov was beneficial. I wonder how long Konstantin Ivanovich would have lasted in today's Spartak...

The other day a resounding dismissal happened at Khimki: Sergey Yuran was fired as the head coach. Not long ago he saved the team from relegation from the Premier League, and in the new season he made a good start - at the time of his departure the Moscow Region team was seventh in the Premier League. According to unofficial, of course, the reason for the dismissal was a conflict with the main investor of the club Tufan Sadygov - allegedly in the previous match against Rostov Juran did not let his son, striker Ilya Sadygov onto the field. At the same time there was thrown information that in fact Juran was thrown out for trying to organize a arranged match. But usually the head coach has not enough authority for such dubious cases...

However, the unwillingness to put the right man in the game is not the only reason for dismissals of coaches. Let's think of others.

The Hand of Moscow

In 2007 Leonid Slutsky - not yet "Russian Mourinho", but already a very promising specialist - was fired as head coach of Moscow. He worked well with the now deceased Moscow team and in the 2007 season he reached the final of the Cup and became the fourth in the championship of Russia - the best result in the history of the club.

However, the manager of "Moscow" club Yuri Belous said that the team had to win medals, and that all else was of no interest - and terminated the contract with Slutsky. Curiously, when, under his successor Oleg Blokhin, "Moscow" fell apart, Belous himself was fired.

The Irreconcilable Semin

Yuri Semin not only has extensive coaching experience - he is no stranger to working under pressure. In 2010, he left Lokomotiv due to a conflict with club president Olga Smorodskaya, aphoristically noting that she had a conflict not with him, but with soccer.

Then, when he came back, he was constantly picking fights with Ilya Gercus, but the desire to achieve results brought them together, and they were victorious - Lokomotiv became champions and won the National Cup. But the next manager, Vasily Kiknadze, did not work out - in 2020, Semin's expired contract was simply not renewed.

Who unseat Fedotov?

Vladimir Fedotov was on the coaching staff of Spartak since 2002, became acting head coach twice, but he was not fully entrusted with the team until 2006. An open and kind person and a good specialist, he became a favorite of the Red and White team, even though he played for CSKA for the entire 15-year career. Moreover, Fedotov built a very good-looking team with mostly Spartak kids.

"Fedotov kept saying that he was being propped up. But he wouldn't say his last name. He was very nervous about all this, nervous that he could be removed at any moment," recalled Yegor Titov, Spartak's captain at the time.

It was said that initially Fedotov was seen as a temporary figure who was to be replaced soon by Stanislav Cherchesov, but he suddenly fell apart. Naturally, the first setback, without which there is no such thing in soccer, was the reason for his resignation. It was a terrible blow for Vladimir Grigoryevich - he fell into depression, which he often poured out with alcohol. In 2009 Fedotov passed away.

It was counting down to hours

One of the strangest dismissals happened in 2014 with Viktor Goncharenko. He coached Kuban Krasnodar at the time, finishing an unthinkable fifth in the Premier League. But the management of the club did not sit still and decided to change the coach for some reason. And it turned out that during the day the general director Yevgeny Muravyov first admired the results and denied the information about Goncharenko's resignation, and a few hours later criticized him - and the fate of the Belarusian specialist was sealed.

And how to survive in such crazy conditions? Is it possible to treat the coaching profession philosophically, like Miodrag Bozhovich, who has worked in seven Russian clubs: "I used to be nervous, but now I understand perfectly well that a coach's suitcase must be half-open. You should never take away spring and winter things. Whatever the weather is at the time of transition, that's what you take. You can get away easy." What can you do, that's the coach's fate now.