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The FNL has just hit the half way stage in their season – each team has now played 19 matches out of the 38 to be played in the regular season. It’s been some start to the season for the league, which has seen average attendances higher than any time in recent years thanks to the football fever carrying over from the World Cup. People are once again happy to go and watch their local team, especially those that play in World Cup stadia.

A fantastic graphic put together by @DeporFinazas showed the top 25 average attendances in second tier leagues around Europe. In a result which would have been unthinkable just 6 months ago, three Russian FNL sides were in the list. Rotor Volgograd in 9th, Nizhny Novgorod in 14th and Mordovia Saransk in 24th.

At this stage, with four promotion spots available (two automatic and two via playoffs vs 13th and 14th in the RPL), its perhaps worth casting an eye to the teams currently leading the charge to join Russia’s elite.

FC Tambov

Leading the league right now are FC Tambov. Based in a small city of 300,000 inhabitants 300km southeast of Moscow, this is not their first brush with potential promotion. Two seasons ago, they finished in 5th place, just outside the playoff spots, and last season they went one better, finishing in 4th and setting up a play-off vs Amkar Perm. Amkar won the tie, but to rub salt in the wounds, would go bust shortly after. Fellow relegated side Anzhi were given a reprise to stay in the league.

A squad built primarily of very experienced Russians with an average age of 28 (the oldest in the league), they are lead up front by Ivorian striker Senin Sebai, a client of super-agent Dmitriy Selyuk. Having a foreign player in the FNL was once a rarity, let alone having an African player, so it is refreshing to see. Sebai has lived up to the billing that Selyuk gives him, and he is the sides top scorer with 8 goals in 16 appearances so far this season. He is not their only African player either, as they have 20 year old Nigerian winger Benito Muyiwa on the books, though he is yet to really get a serious starting berth in the team.

Senin Sebai celebrates after scoring vs Chertanovo this season. Photo: http://fc-tambov.ru/

Having been coached by former Rostov and Volga NN manager Andrey Talalaev in their previous two seasons, he was poached by Armenian side Pyunik for their Europa League campaign. Tambov replaced him with Timur Shipshev, a man who played most of his career at Spartak Nalchik before then managing them. The change of coach has clearly had little affect as they have swept aside their top 4 contenders easily, beating Tom Tomsk 3-0 in September and Avangard Kursk 3-1 in October.

Tom Tomsk

Tom Tomsk, one of Russia’s yo-yo clubs, are again looking like returning to the top flight. Having dropped down two years ago after serious financial problems, they almost faced two consecutive relegations, but managed to finish just one place above the relegation zone.

Having finally managed to ship out all the players who had lingered on high wages from their last RPL campaign, Tom Tomsk have the youngest squad in the league for a team that is NOT a reserve team (e.g Spartak-2) or youth academy (Chertanovo). Their success this season has been built around a very resolute and sturdy defence, having conceded just 12 goals in 19 matches so far.

A Tom Tomsk flag being waved. Photo: Elena Rybakova

Russia U21 goalkeeper Aleksandr Melikhov is number one choice in goal, while former Kuban defender Andrey Kleshchenko (22) has not missed a single minute in defence. Up front, journeyman forward Ilya Kukharchuk is the sides top scorer with 7* goals and at 28 years old is one of the older players in the squad.

Tom’s current manager is Vasiliy Baskakov. He started his career with the club in 1981, and with just two small spells away, has been there ever since, starting as a coach in 2004. This is his second spell as first team manager, and this familiarity with the club and surroundings will go some way to explaining their success after a poor season last year.

Avangard Kursk

The 2018 Russian Cup runner-ups have carried over their cup run form to this season’s league campaign, and have quietly crept up the table into 3rd place. Having been lingering on the edge the top four, a win against Sibir last week, while Nizhny Novgorod lost, saw them leap up the table.

Avangard had been looking pretty solid until recent weeks, but a string of tough games including matches vs Tambov, Tom and the chasing FC Sochi saw the Kursk based side pick up just 4 points from a possible 15. They have been inspired by the performances of midfielder Ruslan Akbashev, who has bagged 7 goals and 4 assists so far.

Tucked away in western Russia around 100km from the Ukrainian border, Avangard are a modest team who have never reached the Russian top flight before. Their stadium is an 11,000 capacity relic, a classic Soviet stadium – open and with a running track. They are currently managed by Igor Belyaev, a Kursk native who played for Avangard over 200 times as a one club player, before becoming a coach for the first team.

Nizhny Novgorod

After a shaky start to the season, another of last season’s relegation contenders is pushing for promotion. Nizhny Novgorod are also the only one of the top four who currently play their home football in one of the World Cup stadia – the Nizhny Novgorod Stadium. The graphic earlier in the article showed that on average, just under 24,000 fans have been showing up to see their team play in the new stadium. If their form and promotion chasing keep going the way they are, that number should stay solid even through winter.

The Nizhny Novgorod Stadium hosting a FNL game ahead of the World Cup. Photo: Bestalex

Nizhny have relied on excellent goalkeeping and defending to get them into a solid position. With just 13 goals conceded in 19 games they have the 2nd best defence in the league so far. In the early stages of the season, teenager Nikolay Sysuev was a regular fixture between the sticks, keeping 4 clean sheets in 9 appearances and conceding just 6 goals. He ranks as the best U20 player in the league so far according to InStat’s ranking system.

New first choice goalkeeper Artur Anisimov has been in inspired form since taking over, and is rated not only as the best goalkeeper in the league by InStat, but the best player in total. Nizhny have struggled to score up the other end, despite possessing former FNL top goalscorer Artem Delkin, who has only bagged twice this season. They have had to rely on goals from all over the pitch, with 2018 Russian Cup winner Maxim Palienko the current top scorer with 5 goals from midfield.

It would be great to have another World Cup stadium in the RPL and under the management of former Russia international Dmitriy Cheryshev – father of World Cup hero Denis – it’s looking like there may be a chance of it.

Read: Nizhny Novgorod – An FNL and soon to be RPL success story?

The Chasing Pack

Neither of the teams sitting in 5th and 6th place – Spartak-2 and Krasnodar-2, are eligible promotion contenders due to the fact their parent club plays in the RPL. Therefore, we look down to 7th, 8th and 9th, where FC Sochi, Chertanovo Moscow and Mordovia Saransk lie.

With Sochi and Mordovia using World Cup stadiums, there are certainly hopes from the higher ups that these teams can experience some success in the future so that the stadiums don’t become white elephants. Mordovia have been bringing in some big attendances this season like Nizhny Novgorod, but FC Sochi – the relocated Dinamo St Petersburg project – has struggled to get off the ground, with only a few thousand per match – still excellent for this level. However, the Fisht Stadium is largely empty most weeks, despite Sochi possessing FNL top scorer Maxim Barsov, who has 13 goals in 17 appearances so far this season.

Fisht Stadium in Sochi. Photo: Andrew Flint/RFN

Chertanovo are an interesting one. An academy project using home grown players only and all of them aged 25 or under, they have already declared that they don’t really want to be promoted. Having just come up from the PFL, their young side has been outperforming expectations and they believe that RPL football could kill the project, which lacks in funding and a stadium – already this year their home matches have been relocated elsewhere.

Looking at the other World Cup stadiums, Rotor Volgograd have had huge attendances but were stuck in the relegation zone at the start of the season. However, after a streak of 10 matches unbeaten, though 6 of them draws, they have shot up the league, and are now 8 points off of Nizhny Novgorod in 4th.

Baltika Kaliningrad have suffered hugely. Despite clearly pumping money into the project and signing a number of big players, the club have struggled to get any form going and sit 18th out of 20 teams. Attendances have suffered as a result, and having started the season with around 15k a match, are now well under 5k. They need to pick things up soon if they want to avoid relegation.

Looking ahead, Sochi with Barsov firing on all cylinders look a danger to the top four clubs at the moment, and their seems a good chance that they could leapfrog Avangard at the least before the end of the season. Whatever happens, the second half of the FNL season promises to be exciting, with just 10 points separating the teams from 4th to 14th.