On 24 August Baltika host Rubin. In May the Kazan side already took three points in Kaliningrad, but since then they have lost their main man in attack: Mirlind Daku has moved to Spartak.
From here on, no jargon. We'll need exactly two terms, and that's all the terminology in this text.
xG is an estimate of how many goals a team should have scored given the quality of its chances: one point-blank shot is worth more xG than ten from outside the box.
Second ball is the one that drops after an aerial duel: defender and forward both jump, nobody claims it, and whoever picks it up wins the episode. That's exactly what Rubin are living on right now.
Who's coming
Most likely the same line-up that played in Rostov:
Staver - Ignatyev, Teslenko, Vujačić, Maldonado, Arroyo - Hodža, Saavedra, Ivo, Bezrukov - Siwe.
Five at the back, four in the middle, one up front. Eight of that list have played all four rounds: Staver, Vujačić and Hodža 360 minutes each, Teslenko 358, Arroyo 320, Saavedra 315. There's simply nobody to swap in, and Artiga said as much himself: "In many positions we don't have players for rotation. And we have a very congested schedule ahead."
One caveat appeared on 19 August. In the Cup match against Spartak Artiga handed four positions to other players at once: Nigmatullin, Urozov, Rozhkov and Samoshnikov instead of Staver, Ignatyev, Maldonado and Bezrukov. That was rotation for the Cup, and by 24 August the line-up will most likely revert to the Rostov one. But I'd keep two places under question: Samoshnikov instead of Ignatyev on the left, and Rozhkov, who got one of the best ratings in the team in Kazan (7.5), instead of Bezrukov in the middle. In general, though, Kazan have plenty of versatile lads, so surprises can't be ruled out!
Rule 1. Don't be afraid to give them the ball
Sounds odd, but it's the most reliable conclusion of Kazan's entire season. Against Akron Rubin had just 36% of the ball - and created 1.55 xG. Against Orenburg possession rose to 62%, while the danger dropped to 0.64, and only 0.39 of that from open play. The first half of that match ended 0:6 on shots against Kazan. With 62% possession.
Put simply: when Rubin give up territory and wait, they reach the opposition box quickly after winning the ball. When they have it, they knock passes around with no idea.
And on 19 August in the Cup it worked a third time, in the most graphic way. Against Spartak Rubin had 38% of the ball - and 2.28 xG against 0.83, 11 shots against seven. Kazan's highest xG of the season, in a match where the ball was with the opponent almost all the time. An honesty caveat: Spartak also rotated heavily and started without a proper forward (Championat), so I wouldn't take those numbers as proof of strength. As proof of a habit - I would.
Three matches, one dependency: the less of the ball Rubin have, the more dangerous Rubin are.
Rule 2. Push them to the touchline, not through the middle
This is the main thing I'd write on the dressing-room board. Baltika don't need to pick one defender and hunt him with the whole team. They need to pick the route Rubin are allowed to take out of defence.
We allow this one: the centre-back plays it to the flank, the wide man gets pinned to the touchline, two players close him down, the ball is cleared or lost, Baltika pick up the second ball. Out by the touchline a player on the ball is always poorer in options: half the pitch is behind him, and the sideline works as an extra defender.
We break the other one: the centre-back finds a midfielder in the corridor between the centre and the flank - that very spot nobody usually guards. And he receives the ball facing forward.
The difference is easy to see from the stands. A player who sees the pitch in front of him plays forward with his first touch. A player who receives with his back to the opposition goal has to turn first - and a second is enough to get closed down from behind. Hodža, Saavedra and Ivo live precisely off that second, and the second route is the only way Rubin genuinely get out from under pressure.
And the main thing about the pressure itself: you don't measure it in tackles. You see it in what pass the opponent is forced to play next. If they've gone down the line or back to the keeper, it's all working, even if you never actually won the ball.
There's also one specific moment for which it's worth leaving your positions once per attack and going forward. When a Rubin defender rolls the ball back to Staver, Baltika shouldn't wait but should step ten metres forward with all the lines at once. The forward blocks the keeper's short pass to the nearest centre-back, the wide men push up onto the full-backs, and the defensive line shifts up behind them so that the long clearance drops in a zone where we have more bodies.
Why here specifically. Staver is reliable between the posts, five saves against Krasnodar, but with the ball at his feet he's accurate in roughly half his passes, and more than a third of his passes are long. Even without pressure he hits every third pass long, and under pressure he'll have no choice left at all: the ball will fly out at random, and that's exactly what we want.
Rule 3. Don't gift them set pieces and penalties
Here's an unpleasant number. Against Akron Rubin created 1.55 xG, and 0.67 of that came from set pieces - roughly 43% of all their danger from corners and free kicks. Against Orenburg the only goal came from a corner: Hodža's delivery, Siwe won the ball at the near post, then Tataev's deflection into his own net. In Rostov, of 1.43 xG exactly 0.79 was a penalty.
And the mirror image of the same story: in the Cup Rubin picked up five yellows from 11 fouls - Vujačić in the 6th minute, Siwe in the 63rd, Gripshi in the 79th, Teslenko at 90+2. A team that lives on contact football is itself ready to foul around its own box.
Add it up: in the league this Rubin creates almost nothing in positional attack, but reliably racks up chances from corners, free kicks and physical battles in the opposition box. So fouls around your own box, needless clearances for corners and rough challenges in your own zone cost more than usual. This isn't a generic line about discipline. It's specifically about how Rubin score. And in that respect they're very similar to Baltika!
Rule 4. Siwe isn't Daku, and you have to fight him differently
Daku was a finisher: get the ball to him and he'd score. Jacques Siwe is different. He's about contact, duels, fouls and the second ball. Artiga admitted it himself: "There's Siwe, but he's a different kind of striker... I'd like to get a central midfielder, maybe a number ten, maybe a forward." No new forward had arrived by 24 August.
In Rostov Siwe won and converted a penalty, and after the match said it straight: "Who was supposed to take the penalty? It was clear from the start that I'd be taking it. I'm the striker, after all." And in the Cup he scored in the 11th minute, was Rubin's best player in that match by the ratings and opened the shoot-out himself. Put Kazan's last two goals together - the penalty in Rostov and the Cup goal - and both are Siwe. Everything dangerous about this Rubin runs through one man in the box.
Let Siwe receive the ball far from the box - there his wrestling is harmless and Baltika have time to collect the rebound. Near the box you have to play him tight but clean: any contact in that zone can end in a penalty.
And another thing. In Rostov Rubin played 87 long passes, more than a fifth of all of them, fewer than half were accurate, and they won 72 of 121 duels. This is a team that goes long on purpose and lives off the second ball. So winning the aerial duel itself matters less than claiming that second ball. Siwe can be allowed to win the header if two of ours are standing next to him picking up the pieces.
Rule 5. Switch off Hodža
If you had to pick one man who decides whether Rubin have a game at all, it's Veldin Hodža. 23 years old, has played for Kosovo since last year, and is currently the team's most expensive player.
By position he's a holding midfielder - the one who plays in front of his defence and collects the first passes out from the back. But he plays much wider than that: all 360 minutes across four rounds, and in round three FotMob actually placed him in a back five, while in round four he was in the middle of the pitch. Artiga moves him wherever a hole needs plugging.
What he actually does in this team:
- He gets the ball when Rubin need not to hoof it somewhere but to get out of their own half properly with the ball at their feet.
- He delivers set pieces. The goal against Orenburg came from his corner.
- He's the second penalty taker. After Rostov Artiga said: "Hodža or Siwe could have taken it."
And now the curious part. For all that status, Hodža is out of form: Championat's average rating over the first three rounds is 6.17, and across four rounds he has no goal and no assist (Championat). Last season wasn't much either for a chief creator: three goals and one assist in 29 matches. And according to FotMob he loses the ball around 12-13 times per match.
In practice it looks like this. Hodža can't be allowed to receive the ball facing forward: in that position he'll always find a pass. With his back to goal he's harmless - then Rubin drop back or hit it forward at random. So one Baltika player has to be standing behind him permanently, not running over after the ball has already arrived. And he needs closing down by two at once: he gives the ball away himself more often than it's taken off him.
And while Gripshi isn't starting (more on that below), Hodža remains the only one at Rubin who can invent something. Switch him off, and all that's left in attack is the long ball to Siwe.
Defenders you need to know about separately
The back five isn't uniform: there's the one you shouldn't touch, the one you should touch constantly, and the one you have to work with in a completely different way.
Igor Vujačić is the one best left alone. Captain, 32, 189 cm, third season in Kazan. Last season - second in the RPL for clearances, fourth for interceptions, 73% of duels won (Championat). Daku himself called him the best defender in the league.
In Rostov he made the team of the week and won the penalty: a centre-back, at 0:1, turned up in the opposition box and was fouled. That's why the rule about set pieces and deliveries matters so much: he runs into the opposition box on every delivery and cross.
But there's a flip side: in his own half Vujačić is accurate in 89% of his passes, in the opposition half in only 59%. He's reliable while he's knocking it around in simple situations, and far less reliable when he has to play forward under pressure. Don't chase him with the whole team, just don't let him calmly pick his target.
Anderson Arroyo is the one you should gladly let have the ball. Colombian, 26, 176 cm, a right-back who plays as the wide man in the five. The shortest in that line and the sloppiest on the ball: 58% pass accuracy and around 18 losses per match - the most in the squad, more even than Hodža. And yet he isn't simply a weak spot: against Akron Arroyo scored and got 7.5 from Championat, and in round one he got 5.5. A player of extremes: he can either decide an episode up front or hand the ball to the opponent in his own third. So his flank is the one the build-up should be squeezed towards.
Maksim Ignatyev is on the opposite flank, and he can be given the ball too - but by a different logic. Arroyo will give the ball away himself if you simply stand nearby. Ignatyev won't: he wins around 73% of his duels, and going in one on one to tackle him is pointless - you'll most likely lose the first contact. What works with him is something else: not fighting for the ball but shutting off the next pass. Let him carry it down the line as much as he likes if he has no target ahead of him. In his three matches, no goal and no assist: he closes a zone rather than creates.
And an important caveat, without which these numbers become a lie: Ignatyev has only 98 minutes across three matches, and in Rostov he was taken off in the 74th. On a sample like that the percentages are a hint, not a characteristic. Besides, he's only just joined the team, and a new man in a back five is a risk in itself: everything there rests on who covers whom without a word being said.
And on 19 August a detail appeared that changes the weight of this whole storyline. Ignatyev isn't in the Cup squad at all - not in the starting XI, not on the bench, even though twelve players were sitting there. There were no explanations, and I won't build theories. But if he's absent again on 24 August, Samoshnikov will start on the left, and everything said about that flank flips: the ball needs to be squeezed there, not routed around it. In other words, Baltika potentially have two addresses for pressure, not one.
And briefly on the rest. Rostov's goal grew out of Teslenko losing the ball in a duel, although otherwise he was the team's best. We let Saavedra receive deep but don't let him past the halfway line. Bezrukov runs a lot and covers zones but produces virtually no dangerous passes. Samoshnikov is noticeably less accurate in the opposition half than in his own.
One detail worth watching
Nazmi Gripshi was Rubin's best creator all last season. And in Rostov he sat on the bench for the full 90 minutes; a round earlier he was taken off in the 58th. The club hasn't explained why, so I won't guess.
And in the Cup - in a match where Artiga changed four regulars and could have given Gripshi 90 minutes without risk - he still didn't start. He came on in the 68th for Hodža, picked up a yellow eleven minutes later and scored his penalty in the shoot-out.
Two matches in a row without a place in the starting XI, and the second a Cup match at that. That's no longer rotation. Good news for Baltika, but with a sequel: by the interval you should be preparing for a different version of Rubin - around the 65th minute Gripshi will come on against a tired defence, and that's exactly when rule number two needs to be followed with particular care.
In brief, with no details at all
Give Rubin the ball and don't worry. Push them to the touchline and pick up the second balls. Don't foul around your own box and don't gift corners. Fight Siwe far from goal and very carefully close to it. Stand behind Hodža all game. And the moment the ball goes back to Staver - all lines forward and shut off his pass to the nearest man.
This is a team that has lost its best forward, has no player behind the striker and has practically no replacements on the bench. And here you have to be precise. Since Daku left on 6 August, Rubin have played two league matches and taken two points: 1:1 with Orenburg and 1:1 in Rostov. And the goal against Orenburg was scored by the opponent into his own net, while in Rostov they scored from the spot. So in two rounds without Daku - not a single goal from open play in the RPL: an own goal and a penalty. That's the key number of this text.
This team can create chances, especially without the ball. It's a very awkward team. But turning those chances into league goals is something it hasn't quite learned to do without Daku yet. And straight away, a correction to everything above: in May Baltika lost 0:1 to Rubin at home, but back then they were six matches without a win, and from the 77th minute they were down to ten men after Civic's red card. Now it's a different Baltika and a different Rubin.
The verdict in two lines
Rubin's main advantage is Artiga's variability. He changes the structure from match to match, moves Hodža into defence and then into midfield, the wide men push high one week and drop into a back five the next. It's an awkward team precisely because every week it's slightly different.
The main problem is that Daku's departure removed two things at once. The simplest way out from under pressure - play it forward and don't think. And the main target in the box. Artiga never got replacements.
In May Daku punished Baltika for one episode. Now he's gone, and Artiga's task is to prove the system was stronger than its best striker. And if Baltika do everything above, he'll have to rely on exactly what he wanted to get away from: one episode around the opposition box.
Previous instalments of analysis from Doctor Alexey 👨⚕️🩺⚽️🙂 on Telegram https://t.me/BalticaB
