Introduction:
Yuri Lodygin came from the wilderness of Greek football to become the number one goalkeeper for usual Champions League participants Zenit St. Petersburg in 2013 for the relatively small fee of €800,000. In a league where it is really useful to have a native goalkeeper, it seems amazing that nobody signed the man born in Vladimir for this incredibly modest fee.
The Greco-Russian keeper played U21 football for Greece in between 2010-12 and was called up to the main Greek national team in 2013. However, he never played a match for the seniors and seemingly severed his ties with the country of his mother after refusing to play for them in August 2013.
Despite initially struggling to regain his Russian language abilities when he first arrived after many years away, Lodygin is now known as one of the big characters at Zenit and is often at the forefront of the club’s media output. Although Lodygin arrived as an unknown three years ago, his excellent form for the Blue White and Sky Blues thrust him into the limelight and into the thoughts of then Russia manager Fabio Capello with many arguing that he should even be playing ahead of Sbornaya’s usual goalkeeper, Igor Akinfeev after the CSKA man suffered a blip in form.
Strengths and weaknesses:
The 26-year-old is an excellent shot-stopper who is capable of producing some top drawer saves which has even led to talk of him moving to a top European club. Indeed it was hard to find any real fault with Lodygin when he first arrived at Zenit although perhaps this was due to the low expectations surrounding him having initially been signed as back up for Vyacheslav Malafeev.
However, as with so many goalkeepers (particularly in modern football) his eccentric style means he is prone to errors which has led to him being dropped at club level and has probably cost him the chance of being the Russian number one.
The 2015/2016 season:
With Igor Akinfeev losing form for both club and country and the European Championships coming up at the end of this season, the 2015/16 campaign was the perfect opportunity for Lodygin to establish himself as Russia’s number one. However, he has faced tough competition at Zenit from Mikhail Kerzhakov (brother of Aleksandr) this season and was even dropped in favour of Kerzhakov for quite a few games after Lodygin put in some poor performances. Rather than spur the 26-year-old on to perform better, this seemed to panic him and his confidence has taken a hit which has led to some rather erratic performances recently, including against France for Russia in the recent friendly match in Paris. His WhoScored rating this season is a low 6.65, which really demonstrates his loss in form. As previously mentioned, his chance of replacing Akinfeev has all but gone.
