Vysheyshaya Liga Match Preview, 17th Round: Sunday, 12 July 2020 v Rukh Brest

On Sunday Rukh Brest visit Molodechno with revenge in mind. In the second game of the season, Energetik pulled off a nervy, backs-to-the-wall single-goal win against Rukh, thanks to a towering Miroshnikov header from a Yak corner, just before half time. Rukh however hit the post, and passed up several other great chances in that game, so will come determined not to be the victim of another Energetik double.

Rukh are Brest's second team, and from 2017-19 were Dynamo's farm club. The links had to be broken, officially, when they won promotion at the end of last season to the top tier, for the first time. Quite how much these links have been actually broken remains a murky subject. Dynamo's owner, Aleksandr Zaitsev has been quoted this season as wanting to build up Rukh more following Dynamo's championship season last term.  Zaitsev is one of Belarus' wealthiest businessmen and has the resources to make Rukh very successful, should he wish to do so.

Brest is located on the south-western border of Belarus and Poland. It's actually possible to visit the city visa-free from Poland for up to ten days, making football weekends there attractive. With a population of nearly 350,000 Brest is a big city with a millennium of complicated and tragic history behind it. On or near a border for most of its existence, Brest has been overrun or ruled by Poles, Swedes, Lithuanians, the Tsars, Imperial Germans, Soviets, Nazis, Soviets again, before settling for the relative "calm" of independent Belarus since 1991.

Trotsky at Brest-Litovsk in 1918

The Russians called the place "Brest-Litovsk" in Tsarist times, and it was here that the fledgling Bolshevik state signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918, marking the end of Russia's involvement in the Great War. When the complicated Polish-Soviet war ended in the Treaty of Riga in 1921, the city became part of Poland, and was re-named "Brest on the Bug". Then, in 1939, the grubby Molotov-Ribbentrop pact saw Brest allocated to Soviet Russia as interwar Poland was dismembered by November that year. Brest has been part of the territory of Belarus since then. The Soviet defenders of the Fortress of Brest held out for a terrible week at the beginning of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in July 1941, founding a resistance narrative that persists to this day, with gigantic monuments to the sacrifice of soldiers and civilians dominant in the town.

So much historical drama is the backdrop to what seems a friendly and engaging city in our times. Brest is shaped by the lazy rivers Mukhavets and Bug. It's a place full of commerce and tourism; a place of art, theatre, music and nightlife; a place where an old school lantern lighter still lights up the illuminations along Sovetskaya. It's somewhere I am really looking forward to visiting and spending some time in, eventually, when Covid-19 has joined Trotsky in the dustbin of history.

Gigantic Soviet-era Monument to the Defenders of Brest

  
The Rapid Rise of the new Rukh Brest

Rukh are a strange team. Founded only four years ago by fans of Dinamo Brest as an amateur team, to play in the local Brest oblast league, their unusual badge claims that they were founded in 1922, which is a bit more than four years ago. That they are now a fully professional side in Belarus' top division, is a pretty astonishing rise, almost without precedent. The motivation for the new Rukh seems to have been a half way house between a Dynamo fans team, and a good amateur team for players in the city not quite good enough for the professional ranks. Few could have predicted how quickly Rukh would rise, back in 2016.

WKS Brzesc, Rukh's inter-war ancestors

The present day club lays claim to the heritage of interwar football in Brest, as club founder and chief executive Sergey Prisyazhnyuk has explained. The original Rukh had their origins in a Polish army team, WKS Brzesc, founded in 1922. Rukh (or ruch in Polish) is a word meaning "movement" or "motion". The club enjoyed some success in the 1930s and were close to making it into the top league in Poland in 1937. Called Ruch Brzesc by then, the club entered a play-off against teams from Grodno, Pinsk and Vilnius- cities all then in Poland, a measure of how much European geography was changed by the Second World War. Ultimately, the club was unsuccessful in gaining promotion, and disappeared when catastrophe overwhelmed the city in late 1939. The present day club's badge, therefore, is an acknowledgement of the history of the game in Brest, and has attracted a lot of interest from across the border in Poland.

The modern day Rukh's spectacular rise has taken them through amateur football, the Second League championship in 2018, and a heart-stopping win over Dnyapro Mogilev in last season's relegation / promotion play off. Everything about this final promotion was skin of the teeth stuff. Qualifying for the play off on goal difference, in third place in the First League table, just three goals better off than fourth-placed Lokomotiv Gomel, Rukh defeated Dnyapro 2-1 in Brest only to lose by the same scoreline in Mogilev. The lottery of a penalty shoot-out saw Rukh prevail 5-4 and enter the top league for the first time. With Dynamo already celebrating wresting the title from BATE, last season certainly was the best in living memory for Brest football.

The relations with Dynamo and Aleksandr Zaitsev remain something of a grey area. Both Dynamo and Rukh share offices in the city as well as the main stadium, GOSK Brestskiy. The side now has a squad containing players from Africa and South America as well as full home internationals, and there's steady traffic in players between the sides. The club's infrastructure is struggling to keep up with the team's remarkable on-field success. Their unusual bottle-green kit with grey socks has been the subject of near-erotic fixation amongst football shirt obsessives and new UK fans alike, but seems unobtainable, with a blanket indifference greeting many purchase requests from abroad. You can buy an unimpressive white t-shirt with the club badge on it for 60 roubles, though.

The fantasy UK equivalent to Rukh's story would be the West Ham United official supporters' club re-founding Thames FC (last played 1932) and entering them into the Isthmian League, with an all-conquering Thames re-joining the Football League four years later, all funded-but-not-funded-honest-guv by West Ham's ownership, run from a portakabin outside the London stadium. I think.

Rukh then are still a very new club rather blinking at their sudden projection from interesting historical footnote to prominent reality. There doesn't seem to be much of a rivalry between the teams, more a gentle amusement from the part of Dynamo fans that their little petri-dish experiment has grown so big so quickly. One gets the sense that a complete separation from Dynamo will be necessary before Rukh will really grow and establish themselves, and it's really not clear how or if that can happen. After all, if Mr. Zaitsev gets bored, and pulls whatever he may be providing, the club, still with a relatively small and new fan base, will tumble down the league structure just as assuredly as they have climbed it. Time will tell if Rukh will last longer than the seventeen years their Polish ancestors managed, or whether they will be yet another here-today-gone-tomorrow Belarusian football story. It's to be hoped not, as with an emerging youth system being run by the club, it's already been demonstrated that there's an appetite for more than one senior team in this historic city.

Rukh in 2020

Rukh Brest are a dedicated goalscorer away from being a top four side, and have had terrible luck with injuries this season. With just a couple of tweaks to the squad, particularly in the attacking department, they would be serious contenders for a European place. Yet, it's not clear how much the ownership actually want Rukh to challenge to dominance of Dynamo in the city, and potentially overshadow them in future. It's a pretty unique question for the club's hierarchy, all Dynamo fans. Consequently, Rukh sit a respectable ninth place in the table, in no danger of relegation, and likely to finish a bit higher. They are draw specialists, having drawn seven of their sixteen games this campaign,and results have been rather binary in nature: 0-1, 1-0, 0-0.

Rukh gaffer Aleksandr Sednev

Rukh are overseen by head coach Aleksandr Sednev, who joined Rukh shortly after their play-off success last season. Sednev had previously spent two years in Kazhakstan with FK Aktobe. In his mid-40s, Sednev has significant Belarusian managerial experience with Belshina Bobruisk and Dnepr Mogilev, as well as brief spells with Dinamo Minsk and the Belarusian under-21 side. He's exactly the kind of coach Rukh needed, a top-level manager used to working with slightly smaller clubs and set-ups. Sednev, a heavy-set and intimidating touchline presence, also had a fifteen year career as a player in the Belarusian and Russian leagues, spells at BATE and Baltika Kaliningrad being the highlights. Sednev is joined in the dugout by young coach Andrei Chelmodeev, who actually oversaw the tail end of the club's promotion and play-off success in 2019, as caretaker, before his new boss arrived. Already an A-Licence coach at just 30, Chelmodeev would be a likely long term candidate to take on Rukh once Sednev moves on. Kazakh Andrei Ferapontov completes the coaching set up.

Goalkeeper Roman Stepanov

Rukh can call on two excellent goalkeepers. Aleksandr Nechaev began the season, but he has been displaced now by Roman Stepanov.  28 year-old Stepanov joined Rukh from the breaking-up shambles that was last season's Torpedo Minsk, and gave the best performance by any goalkeeper that I have seen this season, in a 1-1 draw at Soligorsk. A depleted Rukh side missing their entire first choice defence surprisingly dented Shahktyor's title assault with an astonishing performance built on the athleticism, anticipation and strong hands of Stepanov, who produced a string of remarkable stops to keep the potash barons at bay. It will be a struggle now for Nechaev to get back in the side with his rival in such from.

Sednev favours an unusual 3-4-1-2 formation, with strong defence in mind. Injuries has seen this mutate into a classic 4-4-2 in recent matches. Vitali Gajduchik is a regular centre half, a former Belrusian under-21 cap, who has only missed games through suspension; he has over two hundred games in the top flight, as well as spells in Lithuania and Greece, and is a solid foundation for the back four. In the last couple of games he has started a partnership with Ukrainian Oleksiy Kovtun, a winter signing from Karpaty Lviv. Kovtun netted the winner for Rukh in their opening fixture over Dynamo Minsk, but struggled to establish himself, missing a long run of games before returning for the home defeat to Vitebsk- a game in which he was sent off. Brazilian centre half William, who has featured in the second tier in his home country, was expected to play a much bigger role in the side this term, having joined as a free agent in March for a two year spell. William seems to have been the first choice centre half but seems injured at present- a pity, as he is an elegant and calming presence in the defence, who always seems to have a bit of time on the ball.

Left back by trade, the versatile Artem Rakhmanov is also a regular at the back for Rukh. he has moved around a lot, having played in Estonia, Moldova, Sweden, Poland and Ukraine as well as his home country. He's a hard tackling, non-nonsense defender and dependable. Another Ukrainian, Oleksandr Migunov, completes the regular defensive line up. Having not quite made it at bigger Ukrainian clubs such as Dnipro and Shakter, this is his first spell in Belarusian football; he's also played with Shakter Karagandy in Kazhakstan.

Rukh also have good and settled options in midfield. The regular campaigners include Denis Grechikho, a regular Belarusian under-21 cap and a powerful central or attacking midfielder; his goal this season came in a fine 4-2 triumph for Rukh in Grodno, the last team to get the better of form side Neman. That game's highlights are well worth watching, featuring goal of the season contenders from Rukh's recently-departed Moldovan midfielder Andronic, and Neman's Kadymyan. Rukh were also the last side to get the better of Neman, before the beginning of their run of seven straight wins.

Denis Grechikho (right0

Alongside Grechikho club captain Sergei Tikhonovskiy is a regular, usually playing on the left. He was suspended for aggregating too many yellow cards for the last game against Dinamo, but will come back into contention for the game on Sunday. The skipper is another very experienced campaigner with a dozen senior seasons behind him, all in the Vysheyshaya Liga except for two years with Istiqlol in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe. However, the only ever present in Rukh's midfield has been right winger Artem Kontsevoy, another Belarus under-21 youngster who's chipped in with a couple of assists.

Chidi Osuchukwu signs for Rukh from Dynamo

More may have been expected of Nigerian central midfielder Chidi Osuchukwu, who signed for Rukh from who else but...Dynamo, at the beginning of this campaign. Osuchukwu was an important part of Dynamo's championship season, at the end of a three year spell there. He's been in and out of the side with injury but will be in contention on Sunday after returning last weekend against Dinamo Minsk. A final player to look out for is the Kazakh international Vladislav Vasiljev, an aggressive and hard tackling utility player who normally appears in central midfield, but has played across midfield and defensive positions to cover in Rukh's injury-blighted campaign.

We identified Rukh's problem area as being up front. Senegalese centre forward Abdoulaye Diallo, top scorer with four goals, has caught the eye this season but may be struggling for our game with a twanged hamstring.  Diallo is tall and powerful and moves very easily around the penalty box. But Diallo aside, not many of Rukh's forwards have made an impression. Last season's play off hero Vladislav Morozov has been unable to force his way into the side; two young loanees from Dynamo's second string, winger Nikiforenko and striker Bogomolskiy have not really made too much of an impact over the season; recognising the problem, Rukh and Dinamo swapped players. Full Belarusian international Evegeny Shevchenko joined Rukh, with attacking midfielder Pavel Sedko moving in the opposite direction. Shevchenko made an immediate debut against Dinamo Minsk, and will be certain to start again alongside either Bogomolskiy or Diallo, if fit, on Sunday.

Senegalese forward Abdoulaye Diallo skips past Sovpel and Miroshnikov in March at GOSK Brestskiy

But for injuries I feel sure Rukh would be a top six side. No one has really battered them this season. Sure, they lost the Brest "derby" 4-1, but that scoreline really flattered Dynamo; Rukh passed up several excellent chances to score with the game level at 1-1, and rather collapsed in the last ten minutes following the award of a very dubious penalty. Other than that, their other three league defeats have been by a single goal. The previously mentioned win in Grodno was a stand-out performance in one of the most exciting matches of the league season, and a tempting glimpse of the side's obvious potential. They come into this game on the back of two good wins; firstly at home against luckless backmarkers Belshina, where Rukh raced into a three goal lead after just forty minutes; and last time out against Dinamo Minsk, where Bogomolskiy finally got himself on the scoresheet for the first time in a dull affair.

I expect this weekend to be a low scoring or goal-less draw; if either side comes out on top, it will be by a single goal.

A Sobering Week : Farewell Yak & Tweh

It's been a sobering week in Belarusian football. Firstly came the awful news that Dynamo Brest's squad are riddled with coronavirus, and their game this weekend has been postponed, finally, after the usual display of initial callous indifference from the ABFF. Up to twelve players have the disease; they are the seventh club in the top flight, that we know of, to be afflicted by the virus in one way or another. Whilst all of us have enjoyed the league this season, and personally it has been of great help to my own getting through this awful time, it's dreadful news, and hopefully the players affected will be recovered and back in training soon.

Smolevichi's team last week against Dynamo Brest. Over half these players have now left the club. We have signed second front left, no. 9, Vladislav Muhammedov, a striker. He scored in the thrilling 3-3 draw from the penalty spot.

Beyond this, Smolevichi diced with financial oblivion after a thrilling draw with Dynamo at home. It seemed a strong possibility that the club would fold early in the week. Coach Aleksandr Brazevich and most of the club's better players left; several youngsters have come in on loan, and Brazevich's assistant has taken over as head coach. Smolevichi's chances of survival have clearly been hit, badly, by a lack of funds. Still, finishing the season is clearly a better outcome for everyone. Smolevichi are not the only club to be in financial trouble; rumours that Slutsk are desperately battling closure have got louder as the side has plummeted down the table, whilst Gorodeya's staff and players have been asked to take a pay cut. Belarus is in a difficult place economically at present, is really badly hit by the pandemic, and with almost all clubs being subject to some form of state ownership, there is a knock on effect on elite level football.


For almost all UK fans of the Vysheyshaya Liga this has been the first experience of a Belarusian transfer window, and what a dizzying ticker tape of news there has been since transfers became permitted on 1 July. At least it's been pleasant to go through the process unfiltered by the appalling Jim White.

First to go was the diminutive Liberian David Teklo Tweh. The central midfielder opted to sign at an inopportune time for Dynamo Brest and will no doubt ease his way into the side when normality resumes at the club. Tweh was virtually ever present for us this season and a really skilful and determined attacking midfielder. I always felt that Nosko gave Tweh a platform to play, and when Nosko was nobbled- as happened against Shahktyor and to a lesser extent against Dinamo Minsk- Tweh struggled. Tweh managed a couple of wonderful goals and assists and it's a real pity he's gone, as he was a player who was always exciting and enjoyable to watch. However, he is hugely ambitious, and will be on a much better salary at Dynamo, so best of luck to him and thanks, after a season and a half with Energetik.

I haven't been as dismayed by a player leaving for quite a long time as I was with the departure of Yakshiboev to Shahktyor Soligorsk. I'll be honest and say that his performance in the opening game against BATE was a big part of my deciding to follow Energetik this season. He played with such joy, such a freedom that afternoon, that you rarely see in games in Scotland or England. Clearly, Yak, on loan from Uzbek side Pakhtakor, was not going to be with us beyond this season, but I had hoped he would stay and become the league's second successive Energetik-based top scorer.

It would have been easier to accept if he had left for another country, but his moving to Shahktyor of all clubs is a punch in the guts. It seems that Yak is caught up in a chain with pink-booted popinjay Vitaly Lisakovich at the other end; Lisakovich's departure for a bench in the Russian Premier League is seemingly imminent. Pakhtakor were paying his salary whilst he was with us, so I am sure Shahktyor will be able to offer more in the complicated sub-lease arrangement that has now been agreed. In this sense, Yak's commanding performance at home to Slavia was a fitting farewell, given his suspension for the win over BATE last Saturday. Given the intensity of events this week, that win over BATE already seems to be six months ago. In addition to these departures fringe squad member Pavel Shorets has also left.

Mikhail Bashilov joins us from Belshina

Some of the magic beans that lured Tweh to Brest have already been spent on signing Russian defensive midfielder Mikhail Bashilov from Belshina Bobruisk. Eduard Gradoboyev has finally been sacked down there, and caretaker Dmitry Migas took the chance to move on Bashilov, perhaps with a First League campaign in mind next season. Bashilov played thirteen times for the league's bottom club and is a steady, capable performer. He scored a pearler from distance against Slavia Mozyr earlier in the season.

He's not a like for like Tweh replacement; I see him as a midfield utility player, capable of stepping in if Nosko is recalled by Dynamo Brest, or playing across central midfield. Now Tweh has gone, one would expect Haïk to play a much more prominent role as an attacking midfielder; Sovpel might finally start a game; there might be game time for Wictor Dias and other fringe forwards. Our strength going forward was bolstered as this was being written, by the arrival of Vladislav Muhammedov on loan from BATE's second string. Muhammedov spent the first half of the season farmed out at Smolevichi and was a virtual ever-present, scoring twice in fifteen games, both goals coming in their games against Dynamo Brest. He's a Belarusian under-21 international and stood out at under 19 level, with three goals in nine caps. It'll be interesting to see how he slots in and whether he makes an immediate start on Sunday. Muhammedov is with us for the rest of the calendar year.

It's hard supporting a youth academy, which is what we are. Our role is to develop young talent, and sell them on for profit either for ourselves or for the players' owner. Yakshiboev hadn't been prolific at any club before he came to Energetik, who helped turn him into a league top scorer and enabled him to catch the eye all over Europe. Our business model means that the maximum any player will stay with us is two seasons, and there's little chance to build a solid team that grows together over time. However, few are as good at this role as Vladimir, Anatoly Pavlovich and the White Caps on our bench. I just hope we don't dribble away down the table in the second half of the campaign, having more or less guaranteed safety from relegation in the first round of games, and that we keep pushing hard for a top three-four finish, something this talented young group are well capable of. However, it won't quite be the same Energetik without Yak's explosive running and goalscoring mixed up with baffling spells of petulance and anonymity. A club that's lost it's talisman needs a little time to re-adjust, as do the fans.

I'm looking forward to the game on Sunday and hope for once we can finish with eleven men on the park. As usual, Vladimir will persist with a 3-5-2. If Bashilov plays Nosko may be pushed further forward, or the new man may start on the bench with Haïk or Sovpel coming in. Yudchits will partner Muhammedov or Atemeng up front. It will be interesting to see how the team is re-shaped and what sort of performance we get. After all, we beat BATE without Yak and with less than an hour from Tweh. Rukh at home is a different proposition altogether, and I'm hoping we can go out and prove ourselves all over again. There's no reason why not.

Jon Blackwood
Twitter: @jonblackwood