Slutsky stays

By Gia Saralidze, exclusively to VK

The President of CSKA FC, Evgeniy Giner, informed journalists that the team’s chief coach, Leonid Slutsky, will keep his post for this football season. This decision took many experts by surprise. Some papers, for example Izvestia, have even previously reported his resignation due to the poor performance of the team in the past season.

The team also experienced an elevated level of injury, which the coach couldn’t explain. However, according to Giner, Slutsky did submit his letter of resignation, as the team failed to achieve its goal during the Russian Championship, but he and the team’s main shareholders didn’t approve this resignation.

A former chief coach of the club, Alexander Tarkhanov, said that this decision by the team’s CEO was logical, as the poor performance of CSKA was caused by objective factors and wasn’t Slutsky’s fault. However, ex-CSKA halfback and Russian national team member Rolan Gusev said the team’s composition was quite fine, but it still lost the Championship, so it would have been better changing the coach.

CSKA took third place in the Russian Championship and so lost the chance to participate in the Champions’ League. Slutsky has headed the team since 2009, and he won the Russian Cup in 2010/11.