No need to buy Safonov! Zenit has its own

Perhaps, under the rumor about Zenit’s desire to sign Matvey Safonov in the summer, there are actually no grounds. Although this topic is doomed to be discussed without special reasons: when the richest club and the most talented goalkeeper live by themselves, there will always be those who are sure that they should live together.

We will not now delve into the question of how such a transfer is possible. Let’s think about something else — how much it is needed.

Open Video

Yes, Zenit needs a reliable goalkeeper, it’s true. It has been needed for a long time – soon it will be ten years ago. The last full-fledged season for Vyacheslav Malafeev was 2012/13 – since then the need has matured. His replacements had good moments, but no one managed to close the issue completely so that he disappeared from the selection agenda for years — neither Yuri Lodygin, nor Andrei Lunev, nor Mikhail Kerzhakov, nor Stanislav Kritsyuk. Purely hypothetically, Safonov is really capable of becoming a solution. But when we ask ourselves about the need for such a transfer, we must bear in mind not only the banality that lies on the surface.

The subtext is different: is it necessary to pay a lot of money (and there can be no others, given that for Sergei Galitsky this is a landmark figure), if, most likely, there is a solution of comparable quality, but completely free?

At Zenit, his Safonov is growing up — his name is Daniil Odoevsky. He’s just four years younger — and exactly the same amount behind in professional development.

 

He is simply not visible to the general public yet — just as Safonov was not visible, for example, in the first months of 2018. Matvey started playing in the autumn of that year, when two senior colleagues, Stanislav Kritsyuk and Andrey Sinitsyn, dropped out of Krasnodar one after another. And today the exact same collision is unfolding in Zenit: the same Kritsyuk and Kerzhakov do not fully work with the team. And 19-year-old Odoevsky is ready to appear on the stage. Everything is going to the fact that he will play against Betis in the Europa League.

At least, this is what the test matches say. Daniil spent the last two of them – against Zhilina and Midtjylland – without substitutions. And I left quite positive impressions. This does not mean that he embodied perfection, but he presented a set of qualities necessary for a good goalkeeper.

 

It is curious that Vyacheslav Malafeev kept Odoevsky for Zenit during his managerial experiences. The young goalkeeper was almost taken away from his hometown by Lokomotiv, but Malafeev managed to explain to the guy why it was better for him to stay at home. Perhaps there will come a time when this story will take a special place in club mythology, but in the meantime we should pay attention to the prose of football selection. Namely, what prompted the senior colleague to such an act. What quality of the young man especially hooked Malafeev?

Stable psyche.

This is really the main thing in goalkeeping life. Such a pro as Malafeev, of course, could not buy into the on-duty set of technical and tactical effects — he is doomed to look at the root with his very biography. And it is this characteristic that allows us to assume in Odoevsky of the second Safonov. As in Safonov himself, they see the second Akinfeev.

Hypertrophied confidence is the only criterion that distinguishes the young man who enters the gate once and for all. This quality cannot be played or trained — it can only be innate. Akinfeev and Safonov were just given it from above. And if Odoevsky is from the same football breed, he will also play early.

 

Betis, of course, can be ruthless to the goalkeeper’s conceit, but to be afraid of wolves is not to go into the forest. Akinfeev, by the way, played the UEFA Cup final just at the “Betis” age of Odoevsky – about a month after his 19th birthday. And Igor made his debut in Europe at all at seventeen. So there is absolutely no need to catch up with the horror today. Big careers just start on such days.

It is possible that Mikhail Kerzhakov will have time to recover by the Europa League matches. But Sergei Semak should still be allowed to play Odoevsky. It’s worth it for your own interest. Does Zenit need a goalkeeper for years?