After Celestini's dismissal it would be easy for CSKA to walk into the same handsome trap again: look for a coach "with a European vision", with a presentation, with the right words about intensity, youth development and dominance.
The problem is that CSKA has already had all of that. And it ended in a spring collapse.
What the Army Men need now is not another coach who'll explain what the team should look like in a year. They need a coach who within a month will bring back three basic things: order, anger and clarity. That is exactly why the best option is Andrei Talalaev.
Talalaev is not a romantic choice but a practical one
He's often simplified to the image of the motivator-coach: he'll shout, fire them up, make them run. It's a convenient meme but poor analysis.
Talalaev has long been more than just a man with emotions on the touchline. His Baltika is one of the most coherent coaching projects of the season. A team that only recently came back up from the First League is, at the end of the season, sitting close to the top of the table, conceding very little and looking better organised than many clubs with far more expensive squads. As of round 28 Baltika had conceded just 18 goals — one of the best defensive records in the league at that point.
That is the main argument for Talalaev. He doesn't sell an abstract idea. He quickly builds a team that works.
CSKA needs a coach who knows how to stitch a team together
CSKA's spring problem under Celestini wasn't only the defeats. The team lost its wholeness. One stretch — aggression, the next — chaos. One half — pressure, the second — anxiety. In other words, CSKA stopped being a collective with stable behaviour.
Talalaev is strong at exactly the opposite.
His teams may vary in the quality of their squads, but they're almost always clear in their basic principles: compactness, hardness in duels, discipline without the ball, a quick break after winning it back, maximum involvement of every player. His football doesn't crumble into "whatever each man understood". A player either does what the structure demands or quickly finds himself sitting next to the coach learning something new about himself.
For today's CSKA that isn't a minus but a medicine.
He'll give CSKA what Celestini lacked: stability
Celestini gave the team energy but didn't hold it inside a system. Talalaev, on the contrary, starts with the system.
And here the question "will it be pretty?" isn't what matters. CSKA isn't in a position where it has to choose between beauty and boredom. It needs to become awkward again. A team against which it's hard to start attacks, hard to pick up second balls, hard to open up the centre, hard to close out the final minutes.
Talalaev can do that.
His Baltika didn't just climb high by accident. It was competitive against the top sides, held a long unbeaten run, and the coach himself spoke publicly about intensity as a process: "every six weeks we become even more intense". That's an important detail: for him fitness isn't a one-off pump-up but part of the team's evolution.
After Celestini, CSKA needs precisely a coach who won't say the team "lost its way a bit". He'll make losing your way painful and shameful.
Talalaev has experience of working with constraints
CSKA is a big club. But the Army Men almost always live in a regime of constraints: the young have to be developed, the foreigners carefully integrated, positions filled not with ideal solutions but with what's available.
Talalaev is organic in that environment.
He isn't a coach who absolutely needs five expensive signings for his model. He knows how to squeeze the maximum out of players who've already been assigned a ceiling elsewhere. In that sense his journey with Baltika is very telling: the team wasn't assembled as a top club, but began playing like a team in which everyone understands his function.
For CSKA this is especially important. Because the Army Men don't need a coach whose first move is to ask for half the squad to be replaced. They need someone who'll come in and quickly explain to the players already there who they are on the pitch and why they're there.
He fits mentally
Historically, not every kind of football works at CSKA. The Army identity isn't about the eternal romance of possession and one-twos. It's about focus, character, a readiness to suffer, power in the key moments, being unpleasant for any opponent.
Talalaev fits here almost perfectly.
He won't try to turn CSKA into a sterile team for coaching conferences. He'll build a team that opponents find unpleasant to face. That's an underrated quality in general. In the RPL you can be very modern, very advanced and lose very beautifully. Or you can be a bit simpler but take points every week, because after the match the opponent feels like it's been dragged along the asphalt for two hours.
CSKA now needs the second option.
The main risk is his character. But that's also the main plus
Of course, Talalaev isn't a safe choice. He's sharp, emotional, demanding. There won't be a quiet sanatorium atmosphere with him. There'll be conflicts, hard decisions, unhappy players, possibly public statements on the edge.
But after Celestini that isn't frightening. Because what CSKA needs now isn't comfort. It needs a reboot.
For too long the team has looked as though it lives in a regime of gently explaining away mistakes. Talalaev will break that regime. Some will find it uncomfortable. Some will drop out. Some will suddenly improve, because they'll understand: you can no longer play on status, potential and talk about the future.
And for CSKA that matters more than another "long-term concept".
Why not another foreigner
You could bring in a foreigner again. You could talk about the European approach again. You could wait again while the coach adapts to the RPL, works out the calendar, the pitches, the refereeing, the flights, the Cup, the foreigner limit, the internal, sometimes strange logic of Russian football.
But CSKA has already paid for that road in time.
Talalaev won't be getting acquainted with the league. He knows how points are won here. He knows where a match turns into a fight, where you need to simplify, where to push through, where not to let the opponent turn. He has no illusion that the RPL can be got through with one pretty model.
That's especially important after Celestini. CSKA has already tried a coach with an interesting idea. Now it needs a coach with a tool that works.
Verdict
Talalaev should help CSKA not because he's "one of us", "emotional" or "knows the championship". That's too superficial.
He should help because his strengths coincide exactly with the weak spots of today's CSKA.
The Army Men's stability has fallen apart — Talalaev builds stability.The team has lost control of matches — Talalaev starts with control without the ball. CSKA has gone soft in a crisis — Talalaev makes teams harder.After Celestini there's a lingering sense of a pretty idea with no protection against bad days — Talalaev is exactly the coach who first of all protects a team from bad days.
It's the most footballing choice.
CSKA doesn't need a coach right now who'll explain what the club will be some day later. CSKA needs a coach after whom, within three rounds, opponents will again start saying: "They're unpleasant to play against."And in the RPL that's often half the way to the top.
PS - Just in case: I don't want Talalaev to leave, he's the best thing to have happened to Baltika in a very long time!
Photos: PFC CSKA press service, Match TV
