Dynamo did not concede and confidently beat Rubin

The end of spring and the beginning of summer marked a difficult period in the season for Dynamo. First, the blue and white hosted the championship leader WFC CSKA at home, and then went on a visit to the first derby in the history of Russian women's football with Spartak. Both matches, unfortunately for the Dynamo team and its fans, ended the same way - defeats with a score of 0:1...

Considering that in a week Sergei Lavrentiev’s team will have to play the 3rd round match with St. Petersburg Zenit, which was postponed since March, you won’t envy our girls. And then this week an event happened that, of course, could not add to the good mood of the team - the head of Dynamo sports projects, Alexander Udaltsov, who was at the origins of the creation of the Dynamo women's team, left the club.

However, knowing the character of our girls, they certainly did not lose heart. And the coaching staff of the blue and white will not let them do this, which in women’s football has long been nothing to surprise and certainly will not lead them astray from the path to the goal. But the goal remains the same: winning every match and fighting for the highest places.

Against this background, the upcoming meeting with Rubin Kazan, so far the worst team in the championship, looked like a slight respite. Before the meeting with Dynamo, the club from Tatarstan did not have a single victory in the Super League, moreover, not even a single point scored. Accordingly, Mars Sakhabutdinov’s team took last place in the standings. In general, we could breathe out and calmly prepare for a relatively simple game.

But, as we understand very well, there could be no talk of any relaxation in the camp of the blue and white. Victory was needed like air, especially in the current conditions, when, on the one hand, the Dynamo team continues to fight for a place in the top three, and on the other hand, the daring newcomer to the league “Spartak” is hot on its heels. Surely, letting the red and white forward is definitely not part of Dynamo’s plans.

With a swarm of all these thoughts, girls in blue and white T-shirts took to the field of their native Novogorsk.

Before the start of the meeting, attention was drawn to the absence of two key players in the starting lineup: Diana Ponomareva and Kristina Komissarova. The first was replaced by Arina Taranchenko, who took her place in the Dynamo goal not for the first time, and the second by Lamunat Mustafaeva, a newcomer to Dynamo, but who also appeared in Super League matches this season.

Another change in the start was associated not with the absence, but with the return of a player to the lineup - Elena Shesterneva served a yellow card suspension, due to which she could not take part in the last game with Spartak, and took her place in the white attack -blue.

I must admit, the return was successful. The striker created chances for herself and her teammates, who, let’s be honest, clearly didn’t show everything they were capable of in this meeting. Take the beginning of the match, for example. In fact, Dynamo organized the first moment that could claim the status of a dangerous one only in the 17th minute: Shesterneva shot from afar so that Rubin goalkeeper Alisa Matskevich had to pass the ball for a corner.

But the team from Kazan, to its credit, despite its status as the main outsider in the league, looked quite good in the first 20 minutes: the Kazan team put pressure, beat, earned and took corners, and overall looked even more interesting than the hosts of Novogorsk.

But, as often happens, class still takes its toll. In the 22nd minute, an excellent pass from the left into the Rubin penalty area from Maria Digurova was very skillfully accepted by Fauzia Nazhemba, worked the ball with one touch and fired into the far corner of the Kazan goal. A very cool goal from a striker who had only recently returned from the hospital after a nasty injury!

“Rubin” didn’t seem to be going to give up the initiative even after conceding the goal. Kazan football players continued to put pressure on Dynamo's defense and launch attacks of varying degrees of danger. In one of these episodes, Digurova had to stop a Rubin player who was running forward with an outright foul and received a warning, which is always unpleasant for a defender, especially since there were at least 60 minutes of play ahead.

However, the blue and white calmly controlled the pace of the game and did not make any serious mistakes so that the guests could take advantage of them. But at the very end of the first half, they seemed to put an end to the question of the winner: Elina Samoilova shot from the free kick so that the ball flew over Matskevich in a beautiful arc and landed behind her almost in the top nine of the goal. 2:0 – and the Dynamo team went into the break with a noticeable advantage both in the score and in the game.

Immediately after it, the teams almost identically repeated the starting segment of the match: the Kazan team put pressure, pressed, tried to score, the Dynamo team calmly fought back. But there was still a difference. If in the first half the blue and white team snarled with dangerous attacks, in one of which they eventually scored, then at the beginning of the second half of the match “Rubin” practically locked our players in their half of the field and literally did not allow them to get out of there for 15-20 minutes.

Needless to say, if neither Mustafaeva, who was active on the left flank in the first half, nor Shesterneva, who scored in any convenient situation, nor Kaylan Williams, dreaming of finally breaking her goalless streak, none of them created anything outstanding after the break.

And Dynamo’s brightest moment in attack was created by Ekaterina Sergeeva, who came on as a substitute in the 80th minute. The fresh striker showed some miracles of technique: while dribbling, she bypassed several Rubin defenders in the penalty area and hit hard! It’s just a pity that Matskevich saved this shot for a corner, because it looked really cool.

The teams spent the minutes remaining before the final whistle in different moods: the blue and white wanted to calmly bring the game to a confident victory without conceding goals, the Kazan women seemed to have accepted defeat and did not dare to storm the Dynamo goal in the last minutes.

For complete information about the starting lineups and events of the meeting, see the match center.