There are not only strong-willed victories but also strong-willed draws

The SCC spectators have seen two completely different halves of the Veteran match performed by teams from St. Petersburg and from Moscow. The home team framed of the USSR Champions 1984 from FC Zenith wes desperately losing by the interval 1:3. But the second 25-minutes half saw team St. Petersburg applying their strong-willed features to meet the final whistle with the draw 4:4.

The guests' playing before the break was logically and even predictably advantageous. The matter is that the average age of team Moscow veterans appeared to be lower than that of their rivals. Indeed, the captain of the guest team Alexander Mirzoyan – the famous defender of FC Spartak – has already celebrated his 63rd birthday (he was the older player on the field), but the attacking line of team Moscow was compiled of quite mobile and much younger "veterans" – 49-year-old Valeri Shmarov and 45-year-old Sergei Kiriakov who have been tearing the defence of St. Petersburg's team during nearly the whole match.

Especially offensive was performance of Kiriakov for whom Peterburgsky SCC has been a luck. Just two weeks ago he led his youth team to the victory on Valentin Granatkin Memorial on this very pitch. At first Sergei contributed in opening the score assisting Dmitri Khlestov – a seven-times Champion of Russia for FC Spartak. Then he started to perform technical and beautiful goals himself. When the final whistle came the run-riot Kiriakov had celebrated a hat-trick.

In the second half, though, the game was affected by a too short Moscow bench. On the other hand, team St. Petersburg with Sergey Dmitriyev engaged as a coach – the three-times national Champion who had scored still before the interval – had a drastic rotation of the lineup to keep a good temp and overwhelm the tired Moscovites. The plan worked: Nikolai Epranosyan, Boris Chukhlov and Irakliy Gegechkori three times managed to "shoot" the overweighted but still reserving his miraculous reaction Valeri Novikov – the ex-goalkeeper of FC CSKA. And before scoring Gegechkori has three (!) times lost duels with Novikov... Yet, in the end of the match another coming out one to one resulted in 4:4 after the forward's decision to strike by precision rather than by force.