Starting Press Conference in Peterburgsky SCC

 A press conference for the Commonwealth Cup starting in two days was held in the press centre of Peterburgsky SCC. The participants were the first vice president of the North West Football Championship Boris Vakhrushev, St. Petersburg PE and Sports Committee specialist and ex-player of FC Zenit Aleksey Igonin, head coach of the youth team Russia Nikolay Pisarev, head coach of team St. Petersburg Boris Rapoport, and director of the tournament Dmitry Schneider.

Nikolay Pisarev:

– First of all I’d like to thank the organizers of the Commonwealth Cup and Federations of Football of St. Petersburg and Moscow for their operative reaction on the force majeures and substitutions for the teams of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

Each cloud has its silver lining. Participation of teams St. Petersburg and Moscow gives us a possibility to watch more players. This age is very important. The guys of 19 and 20 years old are changing youth football for adults’. The more players we manage to test in high level games the more effective will be selective work.

What for the team Russia, we gathered only three days ago. We had an agreement with the Premier League clubs that we wouldn’t summon the players who were going to take part in the training session before the start of the season. This was in order to let the guys stay before the coaches’ eyes, to train and prove their capability for playing in the first team. Three players went with CSKA, four with Spartak. Nearly each team of the Premier League has candidates for playing for the national team. There will be players in St. Petersburg who play mostly in the second division and 2nd teams’ tournament. We don’t have much time for preparing for this tournament. We have just met and will only have one testing match before the Cup. I hope we’ll be able to make a fighting worthy team and let the spectators enjoy good football. Of course there’s only one aim, as it was on all the previous tournaments – victory.

Traditionally Ukraine and Belarus seem to be our maim opponents. As far as I know Lithuania also has a good team which have recently hosted European Championship for this age. Another team I’d like to distinguish is team Moldova from our group. Dark horses are team St. Petersburg and team Moscow.

Director of the tournament Dmitry Schneider:

– We have invited teams of all the former Soviet republics to participate in the tournament. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan couldn’t come only by the domestic organizational reasons. We received their written consent but then they refused and begged pardon. However, there may be certain advantages, as Nikolay Pisarev has mentioned. Participation of Moscow and St. Petersburg allows testing a big number of candidates to Russian youth team. We still have the World Cup 2018 ahead. It’s a sin not to make use of the possibility to test such a wide reserve. We could spare finances and cut the number of teams to ten but Football Union of Russia took a decision to include Moscow and St. Petersburg into the participants’ list.