A goal from a throw-in. The classic everyone knew about — and nobody stopped
"We know how to throw long throw-ins, so we throw them." Talalaev said it last season and repeated it after this match. CSKA had surely prepared for it. It didn't help.
35th second: Beveev launches a throw into the six-yard box, Gassama — a centre-back who has come up into the final third as if for a corner — wins the header and lays it off to Offor. The Nigerian has a metre to go. From a metre he usually doesn't miss.
According to Opta, it's the fastest goal CSKA have conceded in the RPL since 2015. And the first goal of the 2026/27 championship was scored by a team from Kaliningrad, in case anyone asks you in a pub quiz five years from now. Chinonso Offor is now part of our league's history: nobody has ever scored the first goal of an RPL season this fast 🔥 The previous record belonged to Aleksandr Shulenin, who scored the first goal of the 2013/14 season in the 67th second 💪
Instead of a paragraph about set pieces, one number: from dead balls Baltika generated 0.64 xG against CSKA's 0.24. With the Army men taking six corners to Baltika's two.
How CSKA turned the game around in three minutes
The early goal played a cruel trick, and Talalaev himself admitted it: the team sat down to guard a 1:0 for 89 minutes against an opponent who finished a place higher last season.
First the warning: in the 27th minute Kozlov headed in Krugovoi's delivery, but VAR spotted a microscopic offside. Six minutes later the warning became a goal: Krugovoi played a short pass to Popović on the right flank, the Serb burst past Beveev (Ilya Petrov didn't cover), and drove a hard low ball into the six-yard box. Anderson slid in to cut out the pass — and sliced it into his own net.
And in the 36th, Baltika conceded the kind of goal it is by definition not allowed to concede: with a single penetrating pass Krugovoi cut through the entire line of five defenders, Glebov ran through one-on-one, sold Borisko a dummy and rolled it into the empty net. 0.97 xG on that shot — chances like that are scored almost every time in the RPL. The pass, of course, was genius, but Moufi simply switched off in the episode.
Both scoring attacks went through Krugovoi. While Baltika was protecting the lead, CSKA's left-back made 99 touches. Offor, in his 76 minutes on the pitch, had 28.
Here too is the answer to why it was CSKA who broke this system. Baltika's back five feels especially comfortable where it needs to win headers and clear the ball out of the box: 28 clearances, and two blocked shots from Gassama alone. But CSKA barely crossed at all — 3 accurate crosses out of 14 for the whole match. The hosts played on the ground and in behind: Popović burst through Beveev's zone before the own goal, Glebov picked up Krugovoi's pass between the defenders. Against a team that loads the box, five men in a line are a wall. Against a team that passes in behind them, they're just five men in a line.
An evening of disallowed goals
The second half was a genre of its own. In the 46th minute Torop made a mess of coming out, Offor was already shooting at an empty net — João Victor cleared it with his chest. In the 53rd Offor did get the ball into the net after Moisés went down — offside, disallowed. A little later the linesman's flag went up again — and again against Offor. In that half-hour the away end rose to celebrate twice — and twice sat back down in silence.
Total for the match: Kozlov's disallowed goal, two disallowed Baltika goals and the incident in the 60th minute where CSKA demanded a penalty for handball and referee Ivan Abrosimov, after the monitor, gave a foul in attack against Gondou. A match in which VAR played a bigger part in the plot than some of the midfielders.
On big chances the second half went to the hosts — 3 clear opportunities against 1. But Baltika raised its possession from 29% in the first half to 42% in the second, and Talalaev had reason to say he was satisfied with the quality of play after the break. The trouble is that satisfaction and points in the table are handed out at different counters.
The numbers: Talalaev-ball in one table
- Possession: 65% - 35%
- Shots: 18 - 14 (on target 5 - 3)
- xG: 2.25 - 1.52
- Passes: 548 - 290
- Tackles: 9 - 23
- Fouls: 11 - 17
- Touches in the opposition box: 22 - 23
That last line explains this match better than any possession percentage. CSKA had the ball twice as much, made 258 more passes, and yet in the opposition box the teams touched the ball an equal number of times. Baltika still doesn't play ball control — it plays discomfort control. 23 tackles and 17 fouls aren't dirt, they're the mechanism.
And one more detail you won't see in the match report: seven of those fouls Baltika committed in its own third — and never paid for it once, because from set pieces CSKA generated a pitiful 0.24 xG. You can foul near your own box as long as the opponent hasn't brought a decent delivery with them. Against Dynamo that trick might cost more.
The problem lies elsewhere: for the umpteenth time in a row this mechanism hasn't produced an RPL win. The last one was in March. So now, on to each player individually.
Baltika player ratings
The method is simple: we take the FotMob and Sofascore ratings and average them. In brackets, the source numbers (FotMob / Sofascore). In places the portals disagreed radically — and that's a story in itself.
Goalkeeper
Maksim Borisko - 7.9 (8.1 / 7.7) Baltika's best player by a wide margin, and according to FotMob the best on the whole pitch. Four saves, all in the second half, and +1.77 on goals prevented: with 2.77 xG on target against his goal he conceded twice, and one of those was delivered by his own defender. In stoppage time he pulled out shots from Firov and Carmo from the edge of the six-yard box. The only complaint is his distribution: 8 accurate passes out of 26.
The irony of the evening: CSKA's main potential incoming transfer this summer is this very goalkeeper, and he showed off the goods precisely against his future club.
Sergei Varatynov - 6.3 (6.3 / 6.3) A rare case of the portals agreeing to the decimal. Did his job without obvious failures and without obvious heroics. Did everything he was supposed to.
Eduardo Anderson - 6.45 (6.0 / 6.9) The biggest ratings gap in the squad — and it's clear why. FotMob punished the own goal, Sofascore counted everything else: 15 defensive actions, 9 clearances, duels won, 85% passing accuracy. On balance, one of the best defenders of the match, unlucky in one slide tackle. Popović's cross was heading into the six-yard box; had he not reached it, someone in red and blue would probably have finished it.
Nathan Gassama - 7.45 (7.5 / 7.4) A centre-back who in the 35th second wins a header in the opposition six-yard box and lays it off to Offor for the first goal of the season. Plus 89% passing accuracy, 10 defensive actions, 2 blocked shots. In the 60th-minute incident he handled after Gondou, but the monitor saved him. The team's second-best rated player — and the main argument that Beveev's throw-ins are still a weapon.
Fahd Moufi - 6.5 (6.7 / 6.3) Taken off at half-time, and that's an exhaustive review from the coaching staff. Switched off for the second goal, and his flank needed a different kind of edge in attack too.
Mingiyan Beveev - 5.9 (5.7 / 6.1) The worst rating among the starters — and the paradox of the evening. His throw-in launched the goal in the 35th second; it was also him Popović burst past in the attack that ended with Anderson's own goal. One throw and one defensive episode decided the match — and both are on his account, just with different signs.
Midfield
Andrei Mendel - 6.3 (6.3 / 6.3) The captain's armband, a yellow card in the 64th and a substitution in the 69th. After the match Talalaev talked about the experienced players who should have led the team; I don't know whether he meant Mendel, but his game didn't really come off.
Ilya Petrov - 6.45 (6.3 / 6.6) 45 uneventful minutes and a half-time substitution along with Moufi. A double change at the 46th minute isn't about fatigue, it's about dissatisfaction with the first half. Already midway through the first half Talalaev was calling Ilya over and telling him how to play.
Maksim Petrov - 6.5 (6.6 / 6.4) Kept to the match's average tempo, and in the 52nd was involved in the most painful moment of the evening — his square pass found Offor in front of an empty corner of the goal, but the goal was disallowed for offside. Came off in the 69th.
Nikolai Titkov - 6.65 (6.6 / 6.7) Played the full 90 minutes — the only one of the nominal midfield to do so. A classic Titkov match: volume, pressing, fighting for second balls, nothing for the highlights. In a team that made 23 tackles against the opponent's 9, someone has to produce those numbers.
Attack
Chinonso Offor - 7.05 (7.3 / 6.8) Scored the first goal of the season in the 35th second, in the 46th shot at an empty net — João Victor cleared with his chest, in the 53rd scored again — offside, a little later another flag — against him again. Five shots, 0.82 xG, three on target. The flip side: 3 accurate passes out of 11 and lost aerial battles — he won just 3 of 12 headers.
Substitutes
Eldar Civic - 6.75 (6.6 / 6.9) The best of those who came on. Replaced Moufi at half-time and brought order to the left side — Baltika's second half was noticeably more stable. Moufi had finished the first half on the left.
Vladislav Pospelov - 6.4 (6.5 / 6.3) 45 minutes of tidy work in the middle and attacking lines. No fireworks, but no losses to blush about either.
Ivan Belikov - 6.55 (6.4 / 6.7) Twenty minutes of energy in place of Mendel. By the ratings, the second most useful substitute after Civic.
Tenton Yenne - 5.5 (5.8 / 5.2) The worst average rating of the match. Came on in the 69th when the attack needed something extra — and added nothing. 5.2 from Sofascore is a verdict of a rating for 20 minutes. Generally speaking, against strong teams it doesn't work out for him, neither last season nor now.
Dmitry Nikitin - 6.1 (5.9 / 6.3) Came on in the 76th for Offor and didn't have time to enter the plot. A quarter of an hour for the future.
The upshot
The starting XI's average rating is 6.7, and only two men are above seven: a goalkeeper who is apparently being taken by the opponent, and a defender who started a scoring attack in the opposition six-yard box. That's a very accurate portrait of the match: at the back and from set pieces Baltika is competitive with the top sides; in open-play creativity, not yet.
The test will come quickly: on 1 August Baltika hosts Dynamo Moscow. At home, where last season they beat CSKA too.
Talking about a crisis after a match like this would be dishonest. Baltika knows how to hurt any opponent in the league — it doesn't yet know how to convert that pain into points. In the RPL that's the most expensive skill of all, and the one that takes longest to learn.
Soon I'll tell you what it's like to watch a match from the press box, subscribe
