Thursday, July 18, 2013

2013-14 Matchweek 1 Recap: 2-2 Draws Galore

This week, the 2013-14 RPL season started and I begin my weekly recap today with this post, which just includes a brief description of every match in the previous week as well as my own personal team of the week. Particularly of note were the trio of 2-2 draws, all of which were breathtaking and unexpected, as well as the 6 penalties across the games this week, which signals a concerning trend in the quality of refereeing in the league.

football formationsDynamo 2-2 Volga
Volga took an shock 2-0 lead within 3 minutes, but Dynamo managed to fight back and equalise by the half hour mark. Neither side were able to put away any of the plethora of chances in the rest of the match and it ended 2-2.

Anzhi 2-2 Lokomotiv
Lokomotiv took a 1-0 lead through Dame N'Doye goal before Samuel Eto'o and Lacina Traore each scored within 4 minutes to to put Anzhi in the lead. Substitute Roman Pavlyuchenko scored on the break to equalise, but Traore went down under extremely light pressure from Vedran Corluka up the other end to win a penalty. Guilherme saved Eto'o's effort to hold onto a 2-2 draw.

Kuban 1-1 Rubin
Rubin lost Aleksandr Ryazantsev to a red card but still managed to get the opening goal of the match through Roman Eremenko. Kuban equalised 15 minutes from time, but failed to find a winner despite having 61% of possession, leaving the score at 1-1 at full time.

Rostov 2-1 Terek
Rostov conceded the first penalty of the match, which Ailton slotted away, before winning one of their own in the closing minutes of the match. Loanee Artem Dzyuba equalised with the chance, before scoring the winner in stoppage time to take the match 2-1.

Amkar 2-0 Tom
Amkar capitalised on 2 penalties in the opening 10 minutes to take the win at home and be the only team to keep a clean sheet this week. Vladimir Rykov got a card in the process of each penalty and was thus sent off, while Georgi Peev scored both to give Amkar the 2-0 victory.

Krylia 1-2 Spartak
Tino Costa had a memorable Spartak debut by scoring in the 18th minute, before Yura Movsisyan followed up with a penalty just 3 minutes later. Luis Caballero pulled one back for Krylia with a wonder goal just after the hour mark, but Krylia's chances were few and far between and they had to settle for a 2-1 loss.

Ural 2-2 CSKA
CSKA were by far the better team in the first half of their match against Ural but only managed one goal through Ahmed Musa before the break. Ural were much improved after the break and Spartak Gogniev scored twice to become the first player to score at least one goal for seven different RPL teams. Vagner Love equalised in the 86th minute and both Pontus Wernbloom and Sergei Ignashevich came close in stoppage time, but were unable to take a winner with the match ending 2-2.

Krasnodar 1-2 Zenit
Zenit went 2 goals up in the first half but conceded just after the break to suffer a nervy second period. Krasnodar were the better side, but couldn't beat the in-form Yuri Lodygin and failed to gain an equaliser. Despite being arguably the worse team, Zenit pulled out a 2-1 win to finish the matchweek.

Table:
1 - Amkar
2 - Rostov
3 - Spartak
4 - Zenit
5 - Anzhi
6 - CSKA
7 - Dynamo
8 - Lokomotiv
9 - Rubin Kuban
10 - Ural
11 - Volga
12 - Kuban
13 - Krasnodar
14 - Krylia
15 - Terek
16 - Tom

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