Russian giant Spartak Moscow have started the new season with a big bang as they thrashed their opponents Arsenal Tule 4-0 on Sunday. The nine time champions killed the morale of their opponents with two braces from Zhano Ananidze , a Georgian, and Quincy Promes, Dutch striker.
The coach of the Russian Champions Dmitry Alenichev said: “It’s nice to start the new season with a win. I set my players a task to score an early opener and they achieved that. It helped us a great deal, while our third goal decided the game.”
From the sixth minute, Spartak Promes sent the ball to Ananidze who was unmarked and the player buried the ball into the net. Arsenal were forced out and they sought an equalizer but they couldn’t quite get it. In the 34th minute, Ananidze got another when he scored 30 yards out.
At this point Arsenal were playing a bit like the punter at netbet casino who sticks his last chip down on a single number of the roulette wheel hoping his number comes up – in football terms they transformed to ‘All Out Attack’, but this tactic was sadly rendered useless when they allowed third goal in, when Promes converted a Dmitry Kombarov cross.
After that it turned into an exercise in damage limitation. Promes rounded the game up when he got his second goal with few minutes to the end of the game.
Before the encounter between both sides, Ural Yekaterinburg won Ufa 2-0, also starting off on a good note as the season promises to be competitive. Roman Emelyanov put the hosts ahead as early as the fifth minute. The midfielder sent a powerful shot from the edge of the box leaving the second goal to come from Roman Pavlyuchenko just before both teams went on the half time break.
The coach of Ural, Vadim Skripchenko, said “it was a good match and I’m especially pleased that we kept a clean sheet today as we’ve done a lot of work to improve our defensive play,” after the game.
Aside Ural’s victory, Terek Grozny defeated Samara 1-0 as Romanian play maker Gheorghe Grozay scored the only goal. Albanina Odise Roshi was fouled in the box in the 75th minute and the midfielder scored the penalty.