Going out of the Cup to Krasnodar on penalties isn't a tragedy and isn't even news. It's another page in a story that has been written in Petrovsky Park for three decades in the same ink of disappointment.
A curse or a system?
Let's go straight to the numbers, which give off a chill and a smell of museum dust.
Almost 31 years without a single trophy. The last time Dynamo lifted a cup above its head was June 1995 - that final against Rotor, on penalties.
50 years without a title. The last time the team took league gold - in what was then still the Soviet championship - was back in 1976.
In that time a whole generation has grown up convinced that Dynamo victories are a myth from the realm of ancient Greek legend. And if you think the problem is only the coaches, it's more complicated than that.
Over those thirty years coaches of almost every possible type have passed through the club: legends of the Soviet school, big Russian names, foreigners with ideas, home-grown firefighters and stopgap solutions.
Romantsev, Gazzaev, Yartsev. Schwarz, Jokanović, Lička. Kobelev, Silkin, and now Gusev.
If a car won't go when acknowledged masters, foreign specialists and the system's own people have all taken turns behind the wheel, then maybe it isn't only the driver? Maybe instead of an engine it has a bank's annual report, and instead of wheels, generals' ambitions?
Honest Rolan on the ruins of "Valera"
That said, Rolan Gusev isn't bad at all. Let's be honest: he took over a team in a state of total hopelessness after Karpin. Dynamo under Valery Georgievich played as if before each match the players were reading not tactical instructions but memoirs on the meaning of suffering.
Gusev hasn't made Dynamo a machine, but he has given it back the signs of a team: more movement between the lines, less doom without the ball, more attempts to play through the strengths of Bitello and Tyukavin rather than just waiting for individual class to carry the match by itself.
And here's the surprising thing: the squad has barely changed. The same people who were suffering six months ago suddenly started smiling.
Gusev is a good lad, he does his job honestly. But he works in a system where his efforts are an attempt to patch a hole in the Titanic with a plaster.
Who runs Dynamo?
At Dynamo it has long been hard to tell where sporting logic ends and bureaucratic logic begins. Decisions seem to be born not in one head but at the junction of several offices, each pulling the club in its own direction
Who's in charge there?
On one side - VTB. From VTB's side, the logic of a big corporate asset almost inevitably presses on the football logic: the result is needed not someday, but preferably yesterday. Lost the Cup? Then the project has fallen short again. And it no longer matters much that in a few months the coach at least brought the team back to life.
On the other side - the Board of Directors, where corporate interests collide with departmental logic. The spirit of an institution for which football is not just a game but a matter of prestige is still alive at Dynamo. And if prestige suffers, especially against the backdrop of a mid-table position, the system almost always needs someone to blame. And the coach is the most convenient candidate.
And dangling in the middle is the sporting department. Buvač, who supposedly answers for strategy, and Valery Gazzaev, brought in as an adviser - a man from an entirely different football era, with a different idea of discipline, management and the coach's role.
Can you imagine what advice they give simultaneously? One talks about a "systemic approach", the other about how "players need to be kept on a tight leash". Maybe both are right in their own way. But when those voices sound at the same time, that's no longer strategy, that's noise in the control room.
What's the main trouble?
Dynamo's problem isn't that the management is necessarily bad. It's opaque. It works like a black box.
Nobody knows the real objectives. Nobody understands why today they buy Glebov and tomorrow they bring in as an adviser a man whose views on football look like a greeting from the mid-noughties. Nobody can explain the strategy or the team's style of play.
Gusev does his job honestly. But he works in a system where the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing, while the head is busy counting losses and signing off on new epaulettes.
Epilogue: the circle has closed
And now - about what awaits us.
Dynamo's next game is at home to Krasnodar. And this is already some kind of cruel irony of fate that has turned into a tradition.
For the third year in a row - think about it, the third! - it's in matches between these teams that it gets decided whose heads the golden crowns will adorn.
In 2024 Dynamo itself could have become champion but, as usual, didn't have the stomach for it. In 2025 it decided who to hand the throne to - Krasnodar or Zenit. And now the calendar says May 2026, and the scenery is the same: Dynamo can deprive the southerners of gold and send it to St Petersburg.
The club has turned into the eternal doorman at the champions' dressing room: it never goes inside itself, but it dutifully holds the door for the right people.
And then - Kaliningrad, Baltika, a cold wind and a decision on Gusev. Although, looking at how Dynamo is put together, you realise: in this conservatoire far less depends on the conductor than on what mood the shareholder, or the latest overseer in epaulettes, woke up in today.
