When CSKA Moscow take on Zenit in the Super Cup Saturday afternoon, the Zenit defenders will have to get used to a new face in the Army Men’s offence. The quick Nigerian striker Ahmed Musa is gone after joining English champions Leicester City in a record deal, and he has been replaced by former Kuban Krasnodar and Anzhi Makhachkala striker Lacina Traore. The 2.03-meter tall target man is signed on a one-year loan after some disappointing seasons at first Everton and later AS Monaco, and he has some big shoes to fill as Musa scored 17 goals across all competitions last season.
Musa is however not the only player to leave the Russian capital as marginal players Kirill Panchenko, Sergey Tkachev, Viktor Vasin and Roman Shirokov have all followed Musa out the door, while the youngsters Konstantin Bazelyuk and Dmitri Efremov are away on loan just like last season.
Despite plenty of departures, the summer has been fairly quiet for the Army Men, and it is clear that head coach Leonid Slutsky has little intention of rocking the boat that has been so successful for him in recent years. In fact, the Red-Blues haven’t bought a single player, and the only additions to the squad have been Traore and Russian international Aleksey Ionov, who have both joined on loan, and then Swedish striker Carlos Strandberg and right-back Vyacheslav Karavaev who have returned after their loans ended.
CSKA were crowned champions last season, and the ambitions for this season is without a doubt to copy that achievement, while also performing well in the Champions League. And CSKA are off to a good start already, winning five or their six friendlies this summer, including a 3-1 victory against RFPL side Arsenal Tula last Sunday after goals scored by Bibras Natcho, Georgi Milanov and Zoran Tosic.
That Slutsky is mostly trusting the same players as last season is proved by the fact that he is yet to sign a back-up for the ageing central defenders Vasily and Aleksey Berezutskiy and Sergei Ignashevich, despite them all being well into their 30s. For the same reason, CSKA’s squad remains thin, and without much depth on key positions, which makes them fragile to injuries like we saw last season when they struggled immensely during Seydou Doumbia and Vasily Berezutskiy’s injury periods.
Perhaps most interestingly, the Super Cup fixture could be Mario Fernandes’ first as a Russian citizen. The Brazilian right back received Russian citizenship last week on a special decree signed by President Vladimir Putin.
Be sure to follow Toke on twitter here for all the latest on Russian football.
";s:4:"TYPE";s:4:"html";}