Dmitri Besov Cup

The Dmitry Besov Cup is an annual international tournament, named after the founder of the blue-white-sky blue’s football school, Dmitri Nikolaevich Besov and has been held in St. Petersburg since 2012.

The tournament has seen some of Europe and Russia’s best academy sides enter over the years, some of the entrants include; CSKA Moscow, Lokomotiv and Dynamo Moscow, Borussia Dortmund, Tottenham Hotspur, Benfica and Porto.

Dmitri Besov is a living legend of St. Petersburg football. In 1969, he founded football the Smena school and was the school’s director for forty years. Over the years, Dmitri trained a large number of players who went on to play for Zenit and the USSR and Russian national teams. In 2014, the Zenit Academy was named after Dmitri Nikolaevich Besov.