The Russian Messi and Spartak’s Missing Youth

Fans of the Red-White Moscow side Spartak didn’t have much to celebrate last season, as the club finished sixth in the league, six points behind the historic rivals from Dinamo. One of the few bright spots during Murat Yakin’s single year in charge of Spartak was, however, the amount of youngsters he managed to give debut and utilize on the first team. Most noticeable was the striker Denis Davydov who played 19 matches throughout the season, but also 22 year old Vyacheslav Krotov, 21 year old Artiom Timofeev, 19 year old Aleksandr Zuev, 18 year old Georgi Melkladze, 21 year old Denis Kutin, 22 year old Sergei Bryzgalov and last but not least, 19 year old Anton Mitryushkin got playing time on the first team under the Swiss head coach. Fans had waited for this for a long time, and by the looks of it are forced to wait for again as Yakin is now gone and replaced with Dmitri Alenichev.

Evil tongues claimed Yakin only used the youngsters to buy himself more time, as most of the debuts came in the spring when it slowly became painfully clear that Spartak would miss European qualification for the second year in a row.

A more realistic theory is however that Yakin was forced to attempt to utilize the club’s famous youth academy, named after the beloved midfielder Fyodor Cherenkov, and the many great talents it produces. Last winter Spartak decided to change its transfer approach due to the ruble crisis. The players signed a memorandum that allowed Spartak to work with a fixed ruble rate to lower the escalating wages, and club owner and now former president Leonid Fedun made it clear that the club had to rely more on young players and scale down on the expensive signings.

Spartak’s youth academy as well as the second team Spartak-2, coached by Yevgeni Bushmanov, have for a long time been some of the rare success stories in the troubled club, and last season Spartak-2 were even promoted to the FNL, the second highest division in the Russian football system.

After Yakin’s departure things have however changed, as the young players we saw play last season are now far from getting time on the first team, despite the club bringing in a coach who should know what the club’s football school stands for. Dmitri Alenichev spent some of the best years of his career at Spartak, where he played together with many great players coming through from the academy.

Before replacing Murat Yakin this summer, Dmitri Alenichev was in charge of Arsenal Tula who he elevated from amateurish oblivion to the Premier League in just four years, and he proved that you don’t necessarily need a ton of money to create success in modern football.

Alenichev’s squad was built around some of his former teammates from his time at Spartak, like the goalkeeper Aleksandr Filimonov who stayed with the club until the Premier League, and then a group of talented youngsters. When Arsenal were promoted to the Premier League, they only had two foreign players in the squad, something that was unique by Russian standards. Arsenal’s playing style and squad assembling during their year in the top flight even made the Russia and Spartak midfielder Roman Shirokov call them more Spartak than the actual Spartak.

Alenichev’s approach to young players does however seem to have changed as the pressure on him increased after he moved to Spartak. Compared to last season under Yakin, only the two strikers Davydov and Kozlov of the previously mentioned youngsters have received playing time in the league, and their total of 43 minutes is meager compared to the 654 minutes Davydov alone played in the league last season according to stat website Soccerway.com.

The summer transfer window also saw Vyacheslav Krotov leave the club for FC Ufa for whom he scored his first goals in a cup match against FC Sakhalin that helped Ufa to advance into the next round. Second keeper Sergey Pesyakov and winger Pavel Yakolev were also sent away on loans, and the youth revolution we saw last season is slowly disappearing.

Spartak Moscow were the highest spending Russian club this summer, as they brought in defender Vladimir Granat, winger Ivelin Popov and striker Ze Luis for a total of €11.85 million. All of them experienced players with the qualities to help Spartak climb back towards the top of the league, but for the fans it is nevertheless sad to see ‘the lads from the backyard’ further and further away from the team.

Despite Davydov struggling to find the net for Spartak last season, he was one of the few revelations, and his performances even granted him a debut on Fabio Capello’s national team. He has not played for Spartak’s first team since the derby defeat to CSKA at Otkritie Arena in the middle of August, and after Spartak’s cup match against FNL side Volga, Alenichev made it clear that Davydov currently wasn’t a part of his plans. The head coach of the Red-Whites told the press that Davydov would play with Spartak-2 until the winter break, when Alenichev would consider taking him back at the first team.

This could however be good news for the player Spartak owner Leonid Fedun has named the ‘Russian Messi’, as he’ll at least get regular playing time instead of spending his time on the bench of the first team.

Spartak are currently fifth in the Russian Premier League, and their spending this summer shows that Alenichev and the board have one clear goal – to get back in Europe, whatever it takes- and this has so far hurt the chances of some of Russia’s most promising young players.

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