“Not football, but a pig game”: bloggers sensationally knocked out professionals from the Cup of Russia

For the first time in history, the game at the earliest stage of the national cup was broadcast at the federal level, thanks to the participation of the blog team Amkal, who received the wildcard for the game from the Russian Football Union (RFU). 1/256 finals.

Amkal came out at the end of 2018, its prototype was Herman’s Team, a team of YouTube bloggers who film fights and play football with each other. Its creator and main inspiration is the German Popkov, better known as Herman El Classico.

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German Popkov/VK

In four years, the team has gone from matches with other amateurs in 8×8 format to games at the stadiums of the 2018 World Cup and touring the cities of Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Germany.

The main match in the history of Amkal before he started professional football was the game played in June at the VTB Arena against Dynamo Moscow. About 15,000 spectators gathered in the stands, and Washington Capitals forward Alexander Ovechkin played for the blue and white for about ten minutes, who managed to score with a goal from transfer ambassador Fedor Smolov.

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Vladimir Fedorenko/RIA Novosti

The game ended in a devastating defeat for Amkal with a score of 0:5, but the excitement in the game was so great that the RFU offered the team to play in the first stage of the Russian Cup in order to increase audience interest and give more points. opportunity for players to play in a professional tournament.

Amkal’s opponent was Zorkiy from Krasnogorsk, who played in the Amateur Football League (LFL) last season and won the Second Division championship.

In the first half, the nominal hosts – bloggers – had several chances to open the goal, but at the end of the first half, the Moscow Region team opened the goal: Sergei Popovitsky transformed his opening moment in the penalty area and hit the target without resistance. Golden then did not hold back his feelings and gave an obscene speech that ended on television.

“Uh, ***** (damn). Arrived, ***** (damn), bloggers ****** (damn),” the actress said.

In the second half of the game, Zorkiy switched to the defense used by Amkal: in the 58th minute, from Mikhail Prokopyev’s pass, the club’s first goal in professional football was scored by Alexei Gasilin behind him. Along with the victory in the European Youth Championship, the experience playing with Bayern Munich striker Leroy Sane – both players played simultaneously for the double of Schalke 04 Gelsenkirchen.

At the end of the game there was a removal – Amkal midfielder Vasily Mavrin received a second yellow card and, after his replacement, quarreled with the fans of the guests.

“The match is pig, it’s not football. The legs are usually beaten. I just want to play football, it’s a ball game. “Zorkiy” owes me too. They asked me to do the event for them, I came in a friendly way but now I’m going to bill the guys because apparently they can’t be friends,” he said. He took more than a dozen fouls on himself and got several of his opponents yellow cards.

Regular time ended with a score of 1:1 – According to Cup rules, no overtime is played to determine the winner and the teams immediately went to penalty shootouts.

His hero was Amkal goalkeeper Alexander Mamenko, son of comedian Igor Mamenko. Throughout the series, he evaded a shot from the spot twice and helped his team reach the second round. Now Amkal will play away with Tver on 31 August.

At the end of the match, Denis Lopatin, the coach of Zorköy near Moscow, said that there was practically no class difference between the professional team and the amateur team.

“We put pressure on them at the end of both the first and second half, we had more possession of the ball. I definitely did not feel that we were playing with bloggers and not with a professional club,” says Sport-Express, quoting Lopatin.

Former Spartak Moscow player and coach Valery Gladilin said in an interview with a socialbites.ca correspondent that it is not necessary to compare an amateur team with a team of professional football players.

Amkal is not about professional football. I watched a bit of yesterday’s match and I’ll say it wasn’t bad. When people invest in the development of football, popularize it, appear in the press, on television – all this is beneficial.

But there is no need to talk about professional football here, it is pure show business. Football has no use other than to make money and show off. But it is normal.

This is a good attempt, but it should not be compared with professional football. He needs something else there – to raise children, train new players, deal with infrastructure. And here are the players who went through some football schools but were already injured and blogging. This helps them relax. “Time will tell how this will develop further,” said Gladilin.

In addition, the three-time silver medalist of the USSR championship criticized Krasnogorsk “Zorkiy”, who, in his opinion, did not devote enough time to preparing the football players.

“Zorkiy” also consists of players who have passed a football school. Their trainers said they train two to three times a week – how could that be?

How can a professional football player train two or three times a week? Veterans train more! So the game levels were low.

And the spectacle ensued – there was zeal, dedication, intensity of struggle. There were penalties, fine for fun. But don’t confuse it with real football. Amateurs will not be able to have real competition here, ”concluded Gladilin.

Alexander Alaev, head of the Russian Premier League (RPL), said that the experience of participation of blog teams can already be considered successful.

“The match between Amkala and Zorkiy showed that the mutual integration of media football and professional football is possible. This is an amazing sight for fans. Hot media content. This is for the benefit of Russian football and popularizes our No. 1 sport. The first step towards a new audience,” said Alaev.