MOSCOW, October 25, Sergey Fuks. Latin American football players of Orenburg “They do not suffer from star fever, the club is ready for the fact that there will be offers for them from more eminent teams,” said the Minister of Sports of the Orenburg Region Oleg Pankin.
Orenburg includes Argentines Matias Perez, Lucas Vera, Tomas Muro, Gabriel Florentin and Brian Mansilla, Costa Rican Jimmy Marin and Ecuadorian Justin Cuero.
«»(Head coach David) Deogracia is learning Russian, he has repeatedly emphasized that he likes working in Russia. It is clear that we do not have a million-plus city, but despite this, we have good conditions for training a reserve. We have quite a lot Spanish-speaking players, this is how selection work was formed under the leadership of sports director Dmitry Andreev. His work yielded good results, he found players who were not top in terms of price, but very useful for the monolith of the team, we saw good Argentines, there is a Costa Rican, and they set the tone, of course , make the weather good,” Pankin said.
“Our region is quite simple, and they (footballers — ed.) do not suffer from star fever, this is very important, they work for the team and want to develop further in the league. It is clear that after the season we will probably see offers for them from other clubs, «We understand that they need to grow, and we are aware that we will never become a capital club. We have a very compact stadium, a growing culture of support, which we did not have before,» added Pankin.
After 12 rounds, Orenburg is in 15th place in the Russian Premier League (RPL) standings with 11 points.
«»There was some kind of failure, apparently connected with coaching attitudes, plus Jiri Jarosik had personal questions. The change in coaching doctrine after the departure of Marcel Licka was not entirely successful, we saw a decline at the beginning of the season. Now we see that the guys are motivated , achieved good results — they beat Zenit, so far at least in a home match, and won away against Lokomotiv. I really hope that there is still time so that we at least don’t end up lower than last year, don’t fall lower than seventh places, because we have very big plans,” Pankin noted.
According to the Minister of Sports, work is underway in the region to create a football academy. “We are interacting with the region in terms of creating our own academy, we did not have such a format, we did not see an academy in the full sense of the word. And we really hope that this season the results will be good, and steps will be taken to prepare a football reserve, «Football will again become our basic sport. Unfortunately, our region lost this title; two years ago, football ceased to be a basic sport, because we did not fulfill certain conditions, including the preparation of a sports reserve,» concluded the agency's interlocutor.