The first friendly game at the second Turkish training camp ended in a 0:1 defeat of the White-Blues.
Thursday was marked by an eventful matchday that included two friendly games in a row. Sandro Schwarz planned to field mixed squads for both of them. Fabián Balbuena, who returned from the Paraguay national team, entered the starting eleven and formed a centre-back tandem with Zaurbek Pliyev against Dinamo Tbilisi. Three youngsters Andrey Mazurin, Yaroslav Gladyshev and Denis Makarov appeared in the attacking group.
Makarov became one of the most remarkable players at the start of the match. He tested Davit Kereselidze twice from distance, but the keeper stood vigilant.
Our opponents also did not sit back. By the 20th minute, the visitors opened the score. Tornike Kirkitadze raced through the right wing and rolled the ball past Anton Shunin to free Ousmane Kamara. The Guinean hit the empty net from a few meters.
The Muscovites started dominating on the pitch, but they lacked some passing accuracy into the final third. Dynamo came close to the goal in the 40th minute: Vladislav Galkin crossed well from the free kick, Daniil Fomin assisted to Balbuena, who wasn’t lucky with his header.
After the interval, Fabián had another great opportunity to equalize. This time his dangerous header was turned away by the Georgian goalkeeper. The Tbilisi side responded with a pair of goalscoring attempts. In one of the episodes, Shunin saved Dynamo twice, when Osei ran one-on-one with our goalkeeper and then Kamara succeeded in rebounding.
There was a pretty tough battle on the pitch, in which the main referee even suffered. The ball harmed his hand, and Dynamo head of medical department Alexander Rodionov helped him during a pause.
For the last half hour of the match, Kirill Zhukovskiy came out as a substitute, replacing Makarov on the right wing. He added pace to the Muscovites’ attacks, but it didn’t lead to any outstanding chances.
The second game of the day against PFC Sochi will start at 5:00 p.m. and will be broadcasted live on Dynamo TV. Sochi side is the closest pursuer of Dynamo in the Russian Premier League table standing five points behind the White-Blues.