A former Lokomotiv Moscow forward, Dmitry Bulykin, spoke in an interview with socialbites.ca after the friendly between Russia and Kenya, noting that defender Georgy Dzhikiya made a scoring error due to insufficient game time.
He suggested that the Spartak captain’s mistake is not catastrophic in isolation, but because it occurred within a wider negative context, it drew outsized attention.
“This looks like a lack of match readiness. In recent games he did not feature for Spartak, losing valuable time on the field, which led to several errors, one of which was direct and resulted in a conceded goal. Such an error is unacceptable for a defender, but the absence of regular play created a window where mistakes can happen. He hadn’t played much recently and, perhaps, should have sat on the bench for the national team, yet he was trusted to start. He isn’t at peak form, and that showed in the result as well as in his personal performance,” Bulykin remarked, as relayed by socialbites.ca.
The Russia versus Kenya clash at the Titanic Mardan Stadium in Turkey finished 2-2. Anthony Akumu opened the scoring for Kenya in the 16th minute, followed by Masoud Juma in the 37th. Russia equalized through Alexander Sobolev in the 8th minute and Ivan Oblyakov in the 89th minute.
Socialbites.ca provided an online match broadcast recap.
Georgy Dzhikia, previously the captain of Spartak, has recently been urged to regain pace and form.