Tchurbany 3 - 4 LOKOHELL (387266073)

Fairly good weather for football had drawn a crowd of 19924 to Loginov Stadium. Remo Lista was the appointed referee with assistance provided by Daniel Bailey and Hermès Le Maitre. Tchurbany tactics involved an interesting 4-4-2 combination. They fielded: Lipp - Pakkanen, Labunskiy, Skomorovskiy, Sudarev - Troyanskiy, Karepov, Mishakov, Kucherenkov - Zabrodin, Oborotov.

A 4-4-2 alignment was the formation of choice for LOKOHELL. Starters: Mikhailov - Koksharov, Minkin, Rysakov, Likhach - Strelnikov, Kruglikov, Khochinskiy, Kopylov - Fakhrutdinov, Chkalov.

3 minutes had elapsed when a great chance for Tchurbany to take the lead after a good cross from the right found V. Pakkanen alone with the keeper, but he chipped it to the wrong side of the post. A. Minkin was in the clear after breaking the offside trap following a LOKOHELL counterattack from the left after 4 minutes. His neat finish made the score 0 - 1. The home crowd was not impressed when V. Chkalov came in from the right, shooting hard to score after 15 minutes. LOKOHELL were now up 0 - 2. Confident in their lead, LOKOHELL's players relaxed and focused more on defending the lead than increasing it. 23 minutes in, Tchurbany's F. Karepov received a yellow card for going into a challenge studs first. The local team's free kick specialist V. Pakkanen, reduced the away team's lead to 1 - 2 with a humdinger of a shot after 25 minutes. The teams went for the halftime break at 1 - 2. Tchurbany enjoyed most of the ball, as they maintained 59 percent of possession.

The home crowd cheered when, after 58 minutes, K. Kruglikov's charge up the middle resulted in the keeper making one of his best saves of the day. A tussle 69 minutes into the match resulted in a penalty being awarded to the home team and V. Pakkanen put the ball into the back of the net without any difficulty. That tied the score up at 2 - 2. Almost all the way down to the corner flag, LOKOHELL's G. Strelnikov somehow managed to get a perfect pass into the middle, impossible to miss for E. Fakhrutdinov, who struck for 2 - 3. Having been awarded a free kick in an awkward position after 72 minutes, LOKOHELL did not go for a shot but instead fired the ball hard into the 6 yard box. After a brief tussle with his marker, V. Rysakov was able to power the ball past the keeper to make the score 2 - 4. LOKOHELL had to make a substitution after 80 minutes. V. Khochinskiy limped off the field and was replaced by E. Polivin. A marvellous Tchurbany effort on the right-hand side resulted in a goal after 84 minutes by V. Pakkanen, making the score 3 - 4. By then V. Pakkanen had scored three goals - a hat trick! 85 minutes into the game, S. Sudarev had to leave the pitch due to a knee injury. In came M. Baydakov. Possession in this half belonged to Tchurbany, who controlled the ball 55 percent of the time.

The most dominating Tchurbany player was without a doubt V. Troyanskiy. On the other hand, M. Lipp's play was disheartening. LOKOHELL's best player was E. Fakhrutdinov. Y. Koksharov was a disappointment, however. The match ends 3 - 4.