Rubin Kazan Tearing It Up in Russia

By: Ian Rose | April 27th, 2008

As Russia continues to develop as a footballing nation, fueled by billionaire owners and a solid pool of domestic talent, we’ve come to know a few teams fairly well. Spartak Moscow is well known in the Champions League, and Zenit St. Petersburg is becoming more and more a household name thanks to performances like last week in the UEFA Cup. But it’s a smaller team, from a noticeably smaller city, that is absolutely dominating the early parts of the Russian Premier League season. That team is Rubin Kazan.

The dominance of Moscow and St. Petersburg in the RPL is well documented. Of the sixteen teams currently in the top flight, five are from Moscow. Five. Doesn’t that make it seem all that much sadder that soon, Paris may not have a single top-flight football team? Anyway, though St. Petersburg only has a single side (Zenit), they are the defending league champions, and have on their roster some of the best of the Russian international players. Before Zenit’s win last year, Moscow sides had won the league eleven straight times, including a Lyon-like 6 in a row from Spartak Moscow.

No more France analogies. Promise.

Long story short, seven matches into the Russian Premier League season, it would be a surprise to see anyone outside of the big cities on top of the table. With that in mind, it’s absolutely shocking to see where Rubin stands, not only top of the table, but on a perfect 21 points from seven games, and a full seven points ahead of second-place Dynamo Moscow. In those first seven games, they have beaten Zenit (3-1 in St. Petersburg) and both Dynamo and Lokomotiv Moscow (both in Moscow). In fact, Rubin has had arguably the hardest set of matches to start the season of anyone in the league, and all they have done is win every single game.

This team is hardly coming out of nowhere. Even though they’ve only been in the league for five years, they finished third in 2003 and fourth in 2005. But they have never had a start like this. The difference? Two of the most explosive midfielders in the league. Gökdeniz Karadeniz, a 28-year-old Turkish international, has been phenomenal since his winter switch from Trabzonspor in Turkey. Sergie Semak, a former World Cup player for Russia, also came over in the winter break, from FC Moskva, and has been almost as dangerous. Both sit on four goals apiece from seven matches, in a three-way tie with striker Welliton from Spartak. Any manager in the world will tell you, getting more than a goal per game from your two attacking midfielders is a very good situation to be in.

There’s still a long way to go. Seven matches down, 23 to go. Still, you couldn’t ask for a better start if you’re a Rubin fan, and at the very least, we might see a brand new face from Russia in the Champions League sooner rather than later.