The encounter of the Mir Russian Premier League 29th round, which was held at VTB Arena, ended in a 4:1 win for the White-Blues.
This time, Eli Dasa took the right-back position, while suspended Daniil Fomin was replaced by Bitello in the midfield. Otherwise, Dynamo starting line-up turned out to be similar to the squad that started the game in Kaliningrad a week ago.
The first 15 minutes of the encounter were marked by Diego Laxalt's slalom run, which ended with an unsuccessful pass, and Konstantin Tyukavin's clean power play, after which the captain of the Samara side Aleksandr Soldatenkov fell to the pitch.
Finally, the threat arose from Bitello's individual actions, whose penetration was stopped by Nikolay Rasskazov at the cost of a yellow card. The fouled player himself curled the ball well from a free kick, but Ivan Lomayev denied this effort in a jump. Another promising free kick was earned by Tyukavin, who received the award for the RPL best footballer in April before the encounter. This time Luis Chavez volunteered to perform the set-piece. The Mexican international curled the ball almost perfectly into the top corner, but Lomayev managed to turn it into the crossbar.
Amidst the roar of the fully packed stands, Dynamo players continued to attack. Jorge Carrascal cut the ball brilliantly to Nicolas Ngamaleu into the penalty box, and once again the Samara goalkeeper emerged victorious from the duel against Dynamo forward. However, from a corner kick and a perfect cross by Carrascal, Fabian Balbuena headed the ball into the net!
After the scored goal, the nature of the match did not change – the White-Blues were eager to score more, while the visitors responded with rare counterattacks. In one of them, Balbuena brought down Amar Rahmanovic practically on the penalty line, and Yury Gorshkov struck perfectly into the top right corner of Igor Leshchuk's goal – 1:1. That was the score registered by the end of the first half.
The second half was marked by yellow cards shown to Nikita Saltykov and Roberto Fernandez, as well as a memorable run by Ngamaleu, who got ahead of Lomayev but could not make an accurate cross to the empty corner. However, the assistant referee flagged for an offside at that episode.
And it was the captain who put Dynamo ahead again. First, Fabi made a classy chest pass to Bitello, and a few moments later he pounced on a rebound and struck a powerful shot into the bottom corner of Lomayev's goal from 17 meters out. The Samara side could have equalized quite quickly, but Vladislav Shitov missed from the center of the White-Blues' penalty area.
Having regained the lead, our team did not try to play for score retention, and was rewarded for it in the 76th minute. Chavez earned a corner, Carrascal delivered the cross into the penalty box, Lomayev missed the ball, and Bitello was the quickest to react, scoring the 10th goal in his debut season in Russia.
In the remaining time, the visitors were only remembered for an inaccurate shot by Gorshkov from a dangerous free kick. In his turn, Ngamaleu sealed the visitors' defeat by scoring again in added time. After an interception on their own half of the pitch, Dynamo players organized a fast counter-attack, Laxalt assisted to Vyacheslav Grulev, whose shot was denied by Lomayev. But the ball rebounded straight to Ngamaleu, who sent it into the empty net!
Dynamo collected 56 points and are now 5 points ahead of Zenit, which will play against Akhmat on the road on Sunday. In the away match of the 30th round against Krasnodar on Saturday, May 25th, the White-Blues will only need a draw to win the gold medals.
