The youth teams of Dynamo and Lokomotiv played a fighting draw in Novogorsk

The meeting of the two leaders of the Youth League (Loko and Dynamo were separated by only one point in the standings) could not leave anyone indifferent who follows Russian women's football. And expectations, which is rare, were fully justified.

The teams started without overclocking. Dynamovki – from the corner, which, however, did not conceal anything dangerous for the rivals, but the railwaywomen – from the moment when everything was supposed to work out in their favor, but either Arina Taranchenko herself, or her best friend, the barbell, saved the blue and white. But again – that was just the beginning!

Less than ten minutes after the first scoring moment, the guests organized two new ones at once: first, after a long-range strike, Taranchenko was in place, and then, after a not very confident game by Valeria Azeeva, Loko striker Polina Frolova went one-on-one with the goalkeeper and had an absolute chance to open an account, but ... Again we were saved by Arina Taranchenko, who touched the ball with the tip of her foot and sent it to the corner!

The advantage of the current champions of the Youth League was obvious and tangible: the moments of the railwaywoman were created with enviable constancy, but there was nothing more dangerous than what they did in the first minutes of the meeting.

Dynamo, in terms of some chances, revived only at the end of the first half. First, Svetlana Vinnikova disturbed Loko goalkeeper Anna Berestovitskaya, but nothing more, and the blue and white finished the half in attack: they earned a corner, which ended with an inaccurate strike by Daniella Petrova. In general, the team's goals were postponed to the second half of the match.

The beginning of the second half turned out to be no less interesting than the opening of the meeting. Less than five minutes after the resumption of the game, Petrova fouled her penalty area, received a warning and gave her rivals a great opportunity – at least for a dangerous moment. And it happened, and even what!

If in the first half Taranchenko and our whole team were saved by the bar and Arina herself, then this time the real save was made by the crossbar of the Dynamo gate, which received and reflected the almost perfect shot of the Lokomotiv player.

Well, then the teams went into a positional game, in which there was more struggle than some kind of football creativity. Of the interesting things, Dynamo's double substitution (Anastasia Begeneva and Varvara Demidova instead of Volobuyeva and Azeeva) and another dangerous free kick, to which the cold-blooded Taranchenko did not even react, but simply icily followed him behind the front line, can only be noted.

But what happened in just five minutes – from the 75th to the 80th – was probably the culmination of the whole Sunday match in Novogorsk. In the 75th minute, Petrova's overhang from the left flank led to an unexpected mistake at Berestovitskaya's exit, which Ekaterina Sergeeva took full advantage of and finally opened the account in this spectacular, but for some reason completely goalless match! However, the joy of Dynamo's goal did not last long at all: already in the 79th minute, Kristina Boldyreva took advantage of the Dynamo defense's mistake and shot Arina Taranchenko's goal all alone. Here, even she was simply powerless!

Interestingly, despite the missed ball, Oleg Gusev's wards attacked the rest of the match, but Nikolai Kovardaev's team mostly fought back. Another interesting point is that just before the start of the compensated time, the Dynamo coaching staff introduced five (!) new players into the game: a triple substitution was made in the 88th minute, and a double one in the 89th!

However, all these permutations did not help either of them, and the game, in fact, was very spectacular, ended not as effectively as it could have – 1:1. But I would like to thank both teams for these emotions.

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