“Wings of the Soviets” is the main surprise of the championship. The Samara club fought for survival in the spring, and now it is in second place and, it seems, seriously intends to compete for medals in the RPL this season.
The Osinkin Factor It cannot be said that the start was very successful for the Samara team. After an away victory over Akhmat, the team lost in the cup match at home to Baltika, and then barely escaped defeat in the home game against Dynamo. However, gradually Igor Osinkin’s charges gained decent momentum and after the tenth round they secured second place in the table — ahead of Zenit, Spartak and CSKA. The secret of the Samara team’s success is simple: roster stability and quality coaching.
The fact that Osinkin knows how to build a team’s play became clear during his work at Chertanovo, many of whose students are now successfully playing in the Premier League. In the 2021/22 season, Igor Vitalievich moved to “Krylyshki” and immediately helped them finish the tournament in the top eight, while delighting the fans with spectacular football. A powerful performance attracted the attention of the giants to the team: in the winter of 2022, Ivan Sergeev went to Zenit, and Nikita Chernov and Danil Prutsev went to Spartak.
Before the 2022/23 season, “Wings” continued to sell their leaders — Anton Zinkovsky and Vladislav Sarveli left the team. This could not but affect the results, which went down. And in the winter, Maxim Glushenkov and Sergei Pinyaev left Samara — such a number of losses doomed the club to fight for survival.
At the same time, “Wings” showed a good game, but problems with converting chances and mistakes in defense led to the loss of points even in matches where the Samara residents had the advantage. The newcomers, called upon to replace the departed leaders, had difficulty adapting, the youth were just gaining experience and the team was unable to achieve consistency in results.
Everyone's on the attack But last season's weak performance unexpectedly turned out to be a success for the Samara team. In the summer, the club did not lose its leaders; the coaching staff managed to stabilize the roster and begin to show their football. Attacking and spectacular.
Now “Krylya Sovetov” is the leader of the championship in terms of performance. The team never left the field without scoring goals and scored less than two goals only twice in nine rounds. Osinkin purposefully relies on attacking football, putting players on the field aimed at creating.
So, in the center of the field the team does not have a single pure destroyer — Maxim Vitiugov, Sergei Babkin and Fernando Costanza are more inclined to attack. Right-back Glenn Bale regularly makes mistakes at the back — but his contribution to the team's attack is too great to keep the Dutchman on the bench. The players in the attacking group (Benjamin Garre, Amar Rakhmanovich, Nikita Saltykov) may be underperforming defensively, but as long as they create and convert chances, the coaching staff has no questions about them.
Real contenders for medals? However, we must admit that the Samara team was a little lucky with the calendar. They started the championship with teams from the top eight, but all of them (Akhmat, Dynamo, Rostov and Lokomotiv) were in crisis or in the process of restructuring. Then the “Wings” had matches with opponents from the bottom of the standings, where it was easier for them to take points even with a mediocre defensive game.
It gave the players and the team a great boost — it's much easier to play when you're doing well. Victories lead to victories, and Rostov, which started the last championship well, lasted almost the entire season on such a wave. In the last round, “Wings” completely destroyed the star “Spartak” at home with a score of 4:0, and the Muscovites did not have a single chance in the game. The “red-whites” were so shocked after the end of the match that they limited themselves to the following comment.
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"Many thanks to all the Spartak fans who came to support the team at the stadium in Samara today,” says a message on the club’s official Telegram channel.
And here are the Samara residents the only ones who are pursuing the leading Krasnodar. Now the team does not even notice the losses of leading players, having won several victories without the injured Garre. Samara impresses with its stability against the backdrop of slipping tops and, if the current pace is maintained, they can approach the winter break among the leaders. And if the team is not torn apart again this winter, Osinkin may well bring success to this team.