The first friendly match that was held at the second winter VTB training camp in Turkey, ended in a 3:2 win for the White-Blues.
Taking into consideration two consecutive friendly games this weekend, Marcel Licka divided the footballers into two squads. On Saturday, Sergey Parshivlyuk came out as a left-back, Fedor Smolov established himself at the forefront of the attack, while Jorge Carrascal took the playmaking role. A big group of Dynamo-2 players remained on the bench.
Already in the first minute, Luka Gagnidze fired over the crossbar from outside the penalty area assisted by Luis Chavez. The Bulgarians responded with a breakthrough, and Georgi Nikolov sent the ball past Anton Shunin in one touch from several meters away.
Dynamo got involved in the game gradually, and soon Smolov contributed to Gladyshev's run to the Bulgarian goal. Botev's goalkeeper saved his team for the first time. And then the White-Blues conceded again: in a nice jump, Shunin turned aside a long-range shot to a corner, after which the same Nikolov directed the ball exactly into the left bottom corner.
Our team reacted correctly to this episode and soon won back one goal. Parshivlyuk started a cool combination with a targeted longball to the right wing and Gladyshev made a backheel pass to Stanislav Bessmertnyi. The 19-year-old right-back crossed along the goal, and the goalkeeper of Botev hit the ball right on Smolov's foot. Then, Ulvi Babayev could have equalized immediately, but missed the target from an outstanding position.
The young Dynamo striker did better in added time and earned a penalty, breaking into the penalty box after Smolov's through-ball. Carrascal converted the eleven-meter shot confidently, after which the referee whistled for half-time.
In the second half, Yegor Nazarenko took Babayev's spot on the left wing. The 18-year-old midfielder actively joined the game, making a good pass into the penalty area to Carrascal and a rough tackle that led to a yellow card. Dynamo controlled the course of the match, combined a lot, but it didn't come to great chances for a long time.
Ivan Lepsky not only played confidently as a centre-back, but also almost scored a goal. He headed the ball from several meters away after a corner kick, but the Botev goalkeeper managed to stop it on the goal line. In the 75th minute, Smolov and Carrascal created a magnificent attack, bringing Gladyshev one-on-one with the goalkeeper. However, the youngster didn't succeed in putting his name on the scoresheet.
For the last 15 minutes, centre-back Jan Ces and attacking midfielder Viktor Okishor, who made his debut for the first team, appeared on the pitch. It was Carrascal who made a smart pass to Viktor's breakthrough. In his turn, Okishor rolled the ball to Nazarenko in the fall, but Yegor's strike turned out to be weak.
By the end of the match, our team pulled out a victory thanks to another substitution. In the 88th minute, Aleksandr Chupayov replaced Carrascal and scored a game winning goal with his first touch after a good pass by Smolov. Thus, the 19-year-old striker scored his third goal in a row at winter training camps – one in each of three matches.
In the next encounter the White-Blues will face the South Korean side Gangwon on Sunday. The game will start at 4:00 p.m. and will be broadcasted live in our official group in VKontakte.
