Glamour. Prestige. Quality. These are all words that you would most definitely not associate with a Russian Premier League clash between Ural and Zenit, but it has its own charms. Trust me…
Welcome! After the roaring success of my live coverage of the last two Tyumen matches, I’m bringing a taste of the big time to these pages. Bear with me if updates slow a little – temperatures have dipped below zero and WiFi is capricious beast here at the SKB Bank Arena – but I will bring you the latest with some videos, pictures, live comments and hopefully some exclusive pictures and comment from players post match.
16.16 Fontanello harshly penalised for an accidental handball on the edge of the box…
16.11 Artyom Dzyuba outmuscles Denis Kulakov at the back post, but his looping header sails harmlessly over. A mild warning shot.
16.07 Roman Pavlyuchenko looks to be playing as more of a lone striker, but he was involved well in Ural’s first decent attack. A well-timed layoff to Giorgi Chanturia set up a counter but it came to nothing as Criscito scampered back to cover.
KICK OFF
15.56 Minutes from kickoff here, and the sun has just crept out from behind the clouds. A portent of things to come?… Ok let’s rattle through the team news:
URAL (4-4-2)
Nikolai Zabalotniy; Denis Kulakov, Pablo Fontanello, Radovan Pankov, Alexander Dantsev; Roman Emelyanov, Artem Fidler, Sergey Podoksenov, Giorgi Chanturia; Chisamba Lungu, Roman Pavlyuchenko
ZENIT (4-2-3-1)
Yuriy Lodygin; Alexander Anyukov, Luis Neto, Nicolas Lombaerts, Dominico Criscito; Javi Garcia, Axel Witsel; Giuliano, Shatov, Alexander Kokorin; Dzyuba
15.36 After a five and a half hour drive, I’ve finally made it to the warm safety of the press room. Team news coming any minute (they’re reprinting the sheets after putting Anzhi as the title of Zenit’s lineup…)
