Lodygin, Zenit’s Greek Tragedy

When watching Yuri Lodygin’s recent performances between the posts in Zenit St. Petersburg’s goal, it is difficult to imagine that he was once considered a serious contender to Igor Akinfeev’s number one spot for Sbornaya. Just within the last couple of weeks, Lodygin has made serious mistakes against Maccabi Tel-Aviv, Rostov and most recently against Spartak Moscow before the national team break.

These performances are in stark contrast to the ones he delivered during his debut season in Russia, when he took over after Zenit legend Vyacheslav Malafeev was injured. During his first season after arriving from Greece, where he moved at the age of nine, Lodygin impressed everyone by being strong in the air, good with the ball and by having cat-like reflexes on the goal line. On top of these things, he was even a penalty specialist, which he proved by saving two penalties in the same game against Krylya Sovetov in March 2014, and still having saved more penalties than he has conceded.

Although Zenit only finished second, Lodygin showed Sbornaya boss Fabio Capello enough for him to get his debut on the national team, and he was even selected to deputize for Igor Akinfeev at the World Cup in Brazil.

Although he was a clear number two at the World Cup, Akinfeev’s high-profile mistakes moved Lodygin even closer to the starting spot for Russia, as the 2014/2015 season was set to kick off. It was then a certainty that he did the right thing when he abandoned the Greek citizenship he inherited from his mother before signing with Zenit.

The following season, André Villas-Boas’ first full in charge of the Blue-White-Sky Blues, turned out as a demonstration of force from the St. Petersburg side, as Zenit and Lodygin dominated from the beginning of the season and won the club’s first Russian championship in three years.

Crowned Russian champion and deemed as one of the best and most important players in the country, Lodygin was at his peak. Unfortunately, this didn’t last long. Just a few weeks into the 2015/2016 season, Krasnodar visited St. Petersburg for one of the most highly anticipated games of the season, and Lodygin failed to live up to expectations as the guests won 2-0, with one of the goals coming after a big mistake from the Zenit man.

A few weeks later, he experienced another nightmare as he made one mistake after another during the opening round of the Champions League group stage where Zenit faced Valencia away. Lodygin was lucky to only give away two goals, and even more lucky with Hulk and Axel Witsel being in brilliant shape that day, which secured Zenit a 3-2 victory.

The nightmares continued two weeks later when Zenit travelled to Moscow to face Spartak in one of Russia’s biggest derbies, and once again, Lodygin caught the negative spotlight. Two howlers gave Spartak two unnecessary goals, and especially Ze Luis’ opening goal after just six minutes made Lodygin the laughing stock of the country. Once again, he was lucky that his teammates at the other end of the pitch could make up for his mistakes as goals by Hulk and Artyom Dzyuba secured a 2-2 draw.

After the Spartak match, Lodygin was benched for the first time, as Villas-Boas opted for his back-up Mikhail Kerzhakov for the upcoming Champions League fixture against Gent and the following four games. “Changing the goalkeeper, it is a decision for the benefit of the team,” the Portuguese head coach explained, “But we believe that he [Lodygin] will be able to overcome his poor form and return to previous performance levels.”

Unlike Lodygin, Kerzhakov, who spent the best years of his career at minors Volga Nizhny Novgorod and Anzhi, has never been close to the national team, but in a time of distress, he gave Zenit the calmness and stability Lodygin was unable to provide.

Lodygin eventually returned to the starting line-up, with something similar to his previous performance levels as Villas-Boas had hoped, and with the exception of a less than impressive performance against France in a friendly match in March, he finished the season without making any notable mistakes as Zenit finished third after CSKA and Rostov, but managed to win the Cup.

With Villas-Boas leaving St. Petersburg, and Mircea Lucescu entering the stage, fans were looking forward to a rejuvenation of the Blue-White-Sky Blues. And Lucescu has certainly done exactly that as Zenit remain the only unbeaten team in the Russian Football Premier League, but it has not been because of Lodygin, but rather in spite of him.

He made awful mistakes against two of Zenit’s closest rivals at the top, Rostov and Spartak, and also against Maccabi in the Europa League, which put a lot of pressure on the offensive forces of the team. For those mistakes, he has spent three games on the bench, and it looks more and more likely that Zenit will attempt to purchase a new goalkeeper soon to replace Lodygin.

Lodygin’s shaky form has also impacted his role on the national team, where he is yet to be called up by Stanislav Cherchesov. In Akinfeev’s absence for the game against Costa Rica last weekend, Cherchesov preferred Rostov’s Soslan Dzhanaev, Krasnodar’s Stanislav Kritsyuk and Anzhi’s Aleksandr Belenov over Lodygin, which perfectly exemplified his current situation in the Russian goalkeeper hierarchy.

The reasons for Lodygin’s demise are hard to pinpoint, but he seems to lack some of the fundamentals for a goalkeeper. As it was recently pointed out in Sport-Express, Lodygin has never been enrolled at a football academy, and he is a self-taught goalkeeper. This explains his many mistakes with poor placement on the pitch, as well as his mistake against Rostov earlier this season, where instead of kicking a long ball up the pitch he blindly passed to his side.

Instead of playing in an academy with good coaches, Lodygin started playing in the Greek fourth division by the age of 14, and it wasn’t until he was 16 when he moved to Xanthi, from where Zenit eventually signed him, that he played for a professional club.

Lodygin has come a long way since he had to bike ten kilometers to training as a teenager, but talent can only bring you so far. “As soon as I saw Lodygin, I immediately said: ‘This boy has a great future,’” Malafeev once explained, but he has since been passed by guys like Belenov, Dzhanaev, Kritsyuk and Amkar’s Aleksandr Selikhov, who could all replace him at Zenit this winter. Especially the latter seems like a realistic option due to the rumours of Lucescu scouting him earlier this summer, and the fact that he spent three years at Zenit’s academy before leaving the club in pursuit of regular playing time in 2012. In a poll on who should be Zenit’s goalkeeper on Sport-Express last week, only 15.7 % answered Lodygin, so it seems the fans would be happy with anyone but the man they voted Player of the Season back in 2013/2014.