If we don't play, we quarrel. The war of defamation has begun in Russian football

Mutual hatred of football fans of Moscow Spartak and St. Petersburg Zenit is experiencing a new exacerbation. If everything is more or less clear on the pitch: Zenit today looks a lot stronger than Spartak, who, in addition, are hindered by the referees, then outside the lawn the forces are approximately equal. Moreover, the passions are fueled by the players themselves and football managers.

So recently, after the match Krasnodar - Zenit (2: 4), which became the champion for St. Petersburg, a very controversial video appeared on the network, in which the attackers of the champions Dzyuba and Azmun imitate sexual intercourse.

All would be fine, but the general director of the club Medvedev, stating that the players were just fooling around, also noted that what was happening on the video was a reference to a future match against Spartak. The Control and Disciplinary Commission did not leave these words unanswered and fined Medvedev 200 thousand rubles “The leader cannot afford such offensive excuses for the actions of his players. But his words do not carry any serious consequences...”- explained in the commission.

The penalty, however, did not cool the indignation of the Spartak team. After they lost 1: 2 in the semifinal match at the Russian Cup, Spartak defender Yeshchenko entered the field to say goodbye to the fans wearing a T-shirt with a rather mysterious and at the same time provocative pattern. There was written an obscene three-letter word (instead of the first letter - ellipsis), the word "you", the letter "a" and Ted - a teddy bear from the movie "The Third Extra". There is little doubt that Ted was Medvedev.

And now the KDK (Control and disciplinary committee) has Yeshchenko disqualified for three games and fined 50 000 rubles with the wording "for abusive behavior against persons who are not the match officials, expressed in demonstrations after the game t-shirts with offensive content..." The members of the Control and disciplinary committee, says Soviet sport newspaper, unanimously considered the inscription on the T-shirt, albeit encrypted, offensive, - said the head of the committee Artur Grigoryants. "Yeshchenko was present at the meeting and said that his wife asked him to wear a jersey after the match with Zenit, as she loves bears very much".

The Fratria association of Spartak fans immediately expressed support for the player and is ready to pay a fine for him.

But the aggravation does not end there either.

At the ill-fated Spartak match, the opponents' fans hung out on the tribune a banner with the face of the owner of the red-and-white Fedun and the caption: "Black mirror, first series." This is the name of the popular series, in the very first episode of which the British Prime Minister, at the request of the terrorists, copulates with a pig to save the princess. And the pig, as you know, is a symbol of "Spartacus" ...

Fedun got under the distribution because he accused the referee corps of addictions to Zenit and of deliberately condemning Spartak. Which, incidentally, happened during the semifinals, when referee Ivanov did not give two clear penalties at once to the Zenit goal. Just before this match, as if anticipating unkindness, Fedun said: “I propose to launch the hashtag #SuditeSpartakKakZenit (#JudgeSpartakLikeZenit) - then we will be the champions...” Which, of course, did not like the fans of Zenit.

However, the KDK (Control and disciplinary committee) has not yet made a decision on this incident, since the Zenit management asked for time to conduct an internal investigation into the banner and, in this regard, to postpone the consideration of the case to the next meeting. The KDK (Control and disciplinary committee) went forward. The maximum fine for such violations is half a million rubles, and the maximum penalty is holding a home match of the Russian Cup with empty stands.

Noteworthy is the following curious fact: while Spartak is owned by a private person (Fedun owns a controlling stake), Zenit is owned by the state, since Gazprom is a state-owned company. And this means that the fines imposed on the St. Petersburg team (by the way, the richest in Russian football) are paid not by Medvedev, nor Dziuba, nor Azmun, nor Zenit fans, but by ordinary taxpayers who may not only have no interest in football at all, but and not to know about the existence of Zenit itself. These are the paradoxes of Russian football...