What to expect from… Spartak Moscow

What to expect from…, Just Football’s mini-series profiling the less talked about Champions League 2010/2011 teams, continues with a look at another of Chelsea’s opponents, Spartak Moscow. Russian football maestro James Appell has more:

Spartak Moscow

Russia’s most popular club, Spartak are also the country’s equivalent of a footballing soap opera. Having gone through three managers in as many seasons, the club are now in the unusual position of being coached by their sporting director, former Real Sociedad and Celta Vigo midfielder Valery Karpin. Karpin is notable chiefly for his rather dashing dress sense – at least by Russian standards – but equally his position as both a boardroom heavyweight and first team coach has made for some serious talking points – at one stage earlier in the season after a run of three defeats in a row Karpin was under pressure to take the unenviable decision of sacking himself.

The club are back on an even keel, lying a few points off the European places in the Russian Premier League, but are well off the title pace and will hope instead for a good season in the Champions League. And they were handed a dream ticket at the draw in Monte Carlo last month, picked alongside Russia’s second favourite club, Chelsea, in Group F, along with Marseille and Zilina. The chance to play against Roman Abramovich’s Blues, a club many Russian fans follow as closely as their own domestic sides, is one that Spartak supporters are relishing.

Should the krasnye-belye (red-and-whites) succeed in qualifying for the knock-out stages it will most likely be thanks to their hugely-talented Brazilian forward Welliton. I say Brazilian, but Welliton is actually at the centre of debate in Russia at the moment as to whether he should be granted Russian citizenship and a call-up to their national side, such is his excellent goalscoring record in the country’s Premier League. This season alone he has scored a staggering 15 goals in 16 league matches, including two in his last league game at home to Saturn on Saturday.

Usually playing as a lone frontman in a 4-2-3-1 formation, Welliton will be aided from the wings by new signings Dmitry Kombarov and, of course, Aiden McGeady. Kombarov arrived with his identical twin brother Kirill from Dinamo Moscow during the summer, and is a winger with both an eye for goal and for a cross. McGeady’s talents are well known to those who follow Scottish or Irish football, but it is worth adding that on debut against Saturn the former Celtic man turned in a very good performance. He has been helped to settle by Spartak full-back Sergey Parshivlyuk, who McGeady says speaks good enough English to aid him in communicating to his teammates. It would be nice to think McGeady can perform well on the European stage for his new club.

Another pair of Brazilians pull the strings for Spartak in the middle of the pitch. Alex is up there with the likes of CSKA Moscow’s Keisuke Honda and Zenit St Petersburg’s Danny as the Russian league’s best midfield playmaker. His passing is immaculate, and his touch is deft even on the astro-turf at Spartak’s Luzhniki Stadium. Alongside him is Ibson, a far more defensively-minded player who will screen Spartak’s rather shaky-looking back four. Their partnership is what makes Spartak tick – to illustrate with a bit of naff philosophy, Alex and Ibson are the footballing equivalent of yin and yang – the former an arch-creator, the latter a natural-born destroyer.

Spartak also have a new man in between the sticks. After going through three goalkeepers already this season, Karpin has settled on Ukrainian Andrey Dikan, a new signing from Terek Grozny, as his first choice for the Champions League campaign. Dikan is a late-comer to top-level football, having only recently made his international debut for Ukraine aged 33. He now gets his chance in Europe, and will hope to perform better than his predecessor as Spartak’s number one Soslan Dzhanaev, who made a series of high-profile errors before being unceremoniously dropped by Karpin.

The Spartak soap opera rumbles on, with the club struggling for consistency. They are terribly flaky at the back, having conceded 25 goals in the league already this season, the most in the Russian Premier League’s top half. Martin Jiranek, one of their better performing defenders, was shipped out to Birmingham City in the transfer window, ostensibly to make room for an extra non-Russian player in the side as the Russian league has a cap on foreigners. Such decisions epitomise coach Karpin’s philosophy, which emphasises technically-proficient, attractive passing football but undervalues defensive organisation. The remaining defenders, including new Argentine arrival Nicolas Pareja, a €10m purchase from Espanyol, are not Champions League quality.

Even aided by the raucous atmosphere of a full house at the 80,000 capacity Luzhniki, one can’t help but think Spartak are a little too weak to get out of this group.

Key player: Welliton. When Welliton scores, Spartak win – it’s that simple. In the nine games in which Welliton has scored for Spartak this season they have only lost once. Whether he can do it against Champions League defences, however, is another matter.

Prediction: 3rd. Spartak are looking like quite an exciting outfit these days, especially with the addition of Aiden McGeady. But as pointed out above, they have a defence ill-equipped for the rigours of Champions League football. No Group F match involving them will be boring, but it’s hard to see them preventing Chelsea from picking holes in them, and Marseille will probably have enough to beat them into second place in the group.

James Appell is by his own description a sports obsessive Russophile Northener, and can be found over at his own sports blog The Cynical Challenge.

(photo via chi.egor on Flickr)

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