Dynamo lost to Spartak in Sokolniki

The start of the third season of Dynamo in the elite of Russian women's football turned out to be extremely controversial. On the one hand, in the first round, the blue and white surprised with a productive game and a major victory at home over Rostov (4:1). And a week later, in their first away meeting in Krasnodar, they showed a nondescript game and lost to Krasnodar (2:1), although if the hostesses had used their moments more carefully, the score in their favor could have been larger.

The cheerful beginning was replaced by a painful defeat from an opponent who did not claim championship medals. Unlike Dynamo, by the way. However, it should be noted that nothing radically bad happened for our team. At least, a series of victories, if it happened, still does not guarantee anything. Just remember that the blue and white started last season with an 8-match winless streak: 7 wins and 1 draw. And we finished the season in the same 5th place as a year earlier. So it's definitely not worth paying attention to statistics now.

Moreover, before such a derby as with Spartak Moscow, of course, the main meeting of the 4th round of the Winline Super League, the broadcast of which took its place in the main broadcast schedule of the Match TV channel, which is quite rare for women's football.

Spartak started the new season brightly and, unlike Dynamo, without losses – three wins in a row and 14 goals scored spoke eloquently about this. It is not surprising that with such team indicators, it was the red-and–white football player Tiyana Filipovic who shared the lead in the Winline Super League goalscoring race before this round - she had three goals in the three opening matches of the season. By the way, Filipovic, before the starting whistle on Saturday, was also the top scorer in the confrontation with Dynamo – in the match of last season in Novogorsk, she made poker in the gates of the blue and white and brought victory to her team (2:4). The second in a row in the 2024 season.

What did the teams show in their third face-to-face match?

Unfortunately, only our rivals showed the game that day. Already in the first half it became clear that it would be very, very difficult for the blue and white to take away at least a draw from Sokolniki. As subsequent events have shown, this has become impossible.

From the first minutes of the meeting, the red and white took the ball, seized the territorial advantage and began to create chances at the Dynamo gates of varying degrees of danger. Mostly, by the way, dangerous. Its undisputed leaders, Marina Fedorova, Tiyana Filipovich and Natalia Mashina, were especially active in Spartak.

And if at first the game was on a collision course, by the middle of the half the advantage of Spartak became obvious and began to really threaten the goal of Diana Ponomareva, who for the first time this season took a place in the Dynamo goal. It should be noted right away that it was the goalkeeper who became the main character in the blue and white team - if not for her rescue, sometimes in the most hopeless situations, the final score could have been bigger. In many ways, her merit is that the first half of the match in Sokolniki ended without scoring goals – at least 4 scoring chances were created by the spartacists, including hitting the crossbar. At that moment, by the way, it was Ponomareva who transferred the ball to the goal frame and to the corner.

The incredible pressure that Spartak organized in the first half, our girls still withstood and left for a break with a very good result for themselves. But after the break…

After the break, Vadim Kozlov's wards did not forgive Sergey Lavrentiev's team anymore. Two goals scored within three game minutes (from the 51st to the 54th minute), in fact, predetermined the outcome of the match already at the beginning of the second half. And those who should have done it in the first half, Marina Fedorova and Natalia Mashina, scored for the red-whites.

A double replacement in the Dynamo lineup, when instead of Kaylan Williams and Anastasia Shlapakova appeared on the fieldDaniela Basaeva andAnastasia Kovaleva, briefly calmed down the game, but soon after that the Spartacists scored their third goal and brought the score to a crushing one. Moreover, Tiyana Filipovich scored her goal in a mocking style: she literally brought the ball into the Dynamo goal, easily dealing with the Dynamo defense and the goalkeeper.

We must pay tribute to our girls: despite such a blow, they did not fall apart completely and even won back one ball, thanks to the efforts of Anastasia Kovaleva and Isidora Vuchkovich, who came on as substitutes, for whom this goal was her debut for the blue and white. But Spartak, having solved all its tasks, relaxed a little and made an unnecessary mistake in defense.

The final 3:1 in favor of Spartak recorded the third victory in a row for the red and white in the derby with Dynamo.

For full information about the starting lineups and the events of the meeting, see the match center.