UTLC CUP – международный футбольный и хоккейный турниры

The first day of UTLC CUP 2022: The effective start

The International football tournament UTLC Cup 2022 started on Wednesday 17th August.

 

Hot summer weather, a perfect field of “Sapsan Arena”, a colorful opening ceremony and parting words from the general director of JSC “OTLK ERA” Aleksey Grom became a positive beginning of a big tournament. This tournament, by the way, is the first big international competition for most 14 – years old footballers.

 

The tournament was opened by young footballers of “Astana” (Kazakhstan) and “Alanyaspor” (Turkey).

The meeting began rapidly – in the beginning of the first time the forward of Kazakhstan Aslanbek Marat opened the score. The fast goal blindsided the team from Nur-Sultan. The guys attacked a lot, and played excitedly and quickly. Turkish footballers were hardly getting into the match. The trainees of “Astana” continued playing the game methodically and scoring the goals. The total score is 4:0. Hat-trick is for Aslanbek Marat, who has reasonably received the MVP award. As the forward of Kazakhstan admitted in his interview after the match, he hadn’t scored 3 goals in official games before. And here he’s got such a brilliant debut in the representative international tournament!

 

Turkish footballers from FC “Fatikh Karagyumryuk” also looked rather unassertive in the second meeting of the day against the counterparts of Moscow “Lokomotiv”. This match was also mostly defined by the fast goal. The Muscovites didn’t meet the resistance and scored five unanswered goals. The double is for Nikita Belyakov.

 

The evening section of the tournament’s first day became also productive. The game between “CSKA” (Moscow) and “Crvena Zvezda” (Serbia) was outstanding. It became clear during the teams’ warm –up before the match that it wouldn’t be easy for the Muscovites, because the Serbian team had brought a very athletic staff. At the age of fourteen an anthropometry advantage can be crucial.

Physically determined and partially aggressive style of the guests’ play gave very quick results. Being under pressure The Muscovites made a rude mistake in their penalty area: first the forward lost the ball, and trying to change the situation, brought down the Serbian forward. That was penalty. Vasiliye Kosta shot down confidently into the lower right corner.

After the missed ball the army team’s game went totally wrong. As a result, the Russians missed the ball twice more before the halftime. 0:3.

The second half went totally different – the Serbians were still playing tough, were very good at working with the ball and attacked rapidly. But the Muscovites also gathered strength. They minimized the number of dangerous moments near their gates, moved the game out of their penalty area and scored the goal in 46 minutes. 1:3. Umed Jafoev scored. And 3 minutes later Ilya Pasechnik created intrigue, scoring the second goal. 2:3.

But still they didn’t manage to change the course of the match. They didn’t have enough strength to score another goal. In his interview after the match, the coach of “CSKA” 2008 Rasul Shaihov pointed out the unreadiness of the team for heavy physical struggle.

“In Serbian championship referees ignore some clashes and give the opportunity to struggle and thus footballers get used to the physically determined style of play from young age. In our championships referees blow the whistle more often”.

 

The completion of the first playing day was the Dynamo’s derby – the Muscovites met their counterparts from Minsk. There wasn’t any expected struggle. The trainees of Lev Yashin’s Academy were more effective and had total advantage. 4:1 before the halftime. In the second halftime the Muscovites were playing in a semi-reserve composition and energy saving mode. The score didn’t change.

The first playing day set a very high performance bar: there were 19 goals scored in 4 matches – 4.75 were scored per match! We are looking forward to keep such a sprinter’s speed in the next coming matches!