Artem Chobanian

The Russian Premier League has seen its 2008 season draw to a close and it has been another rollercoaster ride. At the beginning of the season I was clear, as were so many others, as to which teams would do well and which would struggle, but as always there have been many surprises.

1st Champions: Rubin Kazan 

If someone says he has always believed Rubin would become the champions, he is a liar. No fan or pundit could have predicted that and there were two preconditions for the Kazan based club to win the league: Firstly, the obvious favourites underestimated Rubin and didn’t take the lead they built up seriously from the start of the season. While CSKA, Spartak Moscow, Zenit and Dynamo dropped points, Kurban Berdyev, the head coach of Rubin, managed to create a wonderful and powerful playing machine that crushed almost all rivals. A brilliant performance during the whole year proved Rubin’s success is not an accident, but the result of hard work and commitment.

Best Player: Karadeniz Gokdeniz

The Turk has been the soul of the team and one of the links in the chain that bears the most difficult and heavy burden. He was bought for $8M, and now Besiktas want him for twice that price. The fans hope the bosses of the club will not sell him and the team will be the same when they have to take part in the next year’s Champions League.

2nd: CSKA Moscow

The Moscow giants ended the season in second place and that is a success for coach Gazzaev. Last year the head coach was under threat of being sacked and the start of the 2008 season proved there was something wrong with the team. But Gazzaev is a genius coach. He consolidated the team and promised his players would change after the summer break. His promise was true and right, and after the break CSKA were chasing Rubin in the title race. CSKA were unlucky with Rubin’s great consistency, otherwise the team would have swallowed the Kazan club up and ended the season as champions. Gazzaev’s team have been playing better since the summer and the club’s performance in the UEFA Cup group stage is just stunning! CSKA defeated Deportivo La Coruna (3-0) at home and Feyenoord (1-3) in Rotterdam. Definitely, the second place finish is a success for CSKA after their poor start.

Best Player: Vagner Love

Undoubtedly, Vagner Love was brilliant for CSKA. The player showed real Brazilian class and was summoned to the national team several times as a proof of his form. During the title run-in he was simply on fire.

3rd: Dynamo Moscow & 4th: Amkar Perm

Both teams have had a similar season that can be considered a real success. Last year Dynamo and Torpedo Moscow – two famous former Soviet Union teams – were at the risk of relegation, but Dynamo escaped and managed to produce a wonderful performance this season.


Amkar have shown great results but have been unlucky in some games and now had minor chances to get to third place. The last round determined which of the teams deserved to be the third, and now we know it’s Dynamo.


Best Players:

Dynamo Moscow: Denis Kolodin deserves to be called the best in the team for his solid and disciplined performances week after week.

Amkar: Georgi Peev was very useful for the young team from Perm, because of his experience after so many years spent in Ukraine with Dynamo Kyiv. Performed wonderfully and was really the best.

5th: Zenit St Petersburg & 6th: Krylja Sovetov

Both these two have had absolutely different seasons as if they played in different leagues, but both clubs managed to finish close to the top. Of course, for Zenit supporters this season should not be mixed up with this year, the latter being VERY successful. Sure, Zenit fans would love to have their favourite team win the Russian title again, but even now, when all realise that Zenit will not become the champions for the second time, most Russian football lovers and sports journalists agree on the fact that winning the UEFA Cup and the Super Cup will suffice for this year. The Russian season is over, Zenit will most probably leave the Champions League and so, let’s wait for next year when Zenit will play (if they qualify, of course) in the UEFA matches again and in the new Russian Premier League season. Zenit won the last match of the season against Spartak Moscow 3-1 to guarantee 5th place.


Krylja Sovetov is a club with history and tradition. Both football and ice hockey clubs have been respected since the time of their foundation. They have never gained as much popularity as Spartak or CSKA (both football and hockey clubs as well), but the standard of results have been quite high, so this team have been a tough egg for many prominent teams in football to crack. This season proved Krylja Sovetov could be among the best clubs in Russia and if they had better financing, they would most probably be at the top of the table.

Best Players:

Zenit: Undoubtedly Anatoly Tymoschuk and Andrey Arshavin. These two have become the symbols of the club and if they are not to be purchased by some bigger clubs, the ultras are ready to print their faces on Zenit’s badge!

Krylja Sovetov: Yaroshek appeared in 22 games and was the engine of the team in all of these matches. He is 31 years old and very experienced and along with his countryman Jan Koller renewed the team and helped them to reach 6th place.

7th: Lokomotiv Moscow & 8th: Spartak Moscow

Both really have failed to please their supporters this year, especially Spartak. The club ended their participation in the UEFA Cup very early and couldn’t get to the Champions League when they suffered a humiliating defeat by Dynamo Kyiv, 4-1 at home and away, giving an aggregate score of 8-2.

Lokomotiv have been disappointing the fans for several years now. In the 2005 season they were ahead of all other teams by 14 points, but managed to lose the title to CSKA. This year they have shown absolutely nothing and there are rumours as to a complete change in the coaching staff and in the team.


Spartak got Michael Laudrup in the dugout late on in the season, but that didn’t improve the standard of performances. This is the most criticised team now and if Laudrup is to stay, then he and the owners of the club should make some dramatic changes, purchasing famous and strong players and selling the ones that are “drowning and pull the whole team along with themselves…” as Valery Karpin put it in one of his interviews.

Best Players:

Lokomotiv: Perhaps Dinjar Bilyaletdinoov, a very good young player, the captain, but willing to play and progress. Everybody at the club can see his commitment and tries to follow the captain. He is not accurate with his passes, but very strong individually and can shoot from different distances.

Spartak: None! And that is according to the forums at the official Spartak site. Really, if we look back at this season, there are players that have tried to make something on the pitch, like Bystrov, for instance, but in general, no player has made a difference so that we can pick him out.

9th: FK Moskva & 10th: Terek Groznyi

FK Moskva got Oleh Blohin for big cash, but the Ukrainian coach failed to do something significant in the league. There have been constant disputes and quarrels as for who is right and who is wrong in his ideas of managing the team. Yes, Blohin helped the club to stay in the league for another year, but that’s the only result he and his team can be proud of. No good quality of performance, no strategy and tactics… just a team that play to take part. Blohin is most likely to leave the team and, who knows, maybe that is for the better…


Those who read our coverage of Terek, or at least follow the news from Russia and know something about Chechnya, can understand that to finish in the middle of the table is a great result for the club. They are lucky to survive and play nice football bringing joy to the homes of the people living there, so let’s hope the situation will improve and some years later Russia will have one more strong team in the league.

Best Players:

FK Moskva: Again, NONE. The club failed to show reasonable performances and thus there’s no one in the club who made a real difference.

Terek: Ilion Lika, the Albanian goalkeeper. The club from Groznyi have never scored a lot, but let many teams score three and four goals in their net. The keeper was good not to lose heart and try to help as much as he could. In the second part of the season he really improved and deserved lots of praise from the supporters.

11th: Saturn & 12th: Spartak Nalchik

Last season both teams started in very promising fashion, but ended up achieving nothing of note. Unfortunately, lack of finance has not let the teams purchase new players that could bring fresh ideas and options to the playing schemes of the clubs. Saturn struggled hard to get to the top 10, but fell down in the table more often than not and had little chance of climbing up.


Spartak Nalchik have been a bleak shadow of the team that surprised the pundits and the fans several years ago when they defeated almost all the best Russian teams and were at the top of the table for several months. Nothing of this kind has happened this year. At some time in the middle of the season teams like that realise they will have to struggle for their place in the Premier League. Spartak have been lucky to get away from the bottom zone and are now waiting for a new season.

Among the four last teams, 13th: Tom Tomsk, 14th: Khimki Moscow, 15th: Shinnik Yaroslavl  and 16th: Luch Vladivostok I would like to pick out Khimki as the most unlucky one. Moscow is one of the greatest, biggest and richest cities of the world and it has many sports clubs. Of course, not all of them have sufficient financing and Khimki is one of them. The team is named after a region in the suburbs that was joined to Moscow a dozen years ago, but has not become a REAL part of the cosmopolitan city since then. Nobody wants to invest in the club and they are groaning and praying for help. Nobody knows what next season will be for the Muscovites, but at least they are happy to stay in the Premier League for another year.

Shinnik and Luch are gone. Frankly, these clubs, as well as Khimki and Tom by the way, have reminded us of insects in a glass of water: almost drowning, but trying to get out, climbing up the walls of the glass but falling down again… It’s a pitiful spectacle. We’ll wait for the teams to recover and come back again to show their relegation last year was just bad luck and the result of unfortunate circumstances. They are nice teams from cities that have never had much of a football rush, but perhaps that wound will hurt their pride so much that their return will be sensational!

No best players for the last six teams so far. If a team struggles hard to survive so that they can stay in the “elite” league for one more year and finally manages to do it, then the whole team deserves to be praised and congratulated. Unfortunately, that does not concern Shinnik and Luch…

Well, the Russian season is over and I must say it’s been very intriguing campaign from the start. I am delighted Rubin won the championship, and that will bring another strong team into European competitions. Russian supporters and pundits just hope this club will remain as good as it was during the season and will not follow “the tradition” of selling half of the players and thus ruining the aura of the team and their well-organized tactical strategy. Whether or not Rubin succeeds in the Champions League next year depends entirely on the team itself.