Karpin’s teams often fail the second part of the season. Is this a myth or true

Ilya Vasiliev checked everything.

Valery Karpin’s Rostov started the spring poorly: they lost to Ural in the Russian Cup (1:1, 1:2), and then defended terribly against Lokomotiv (1:3). 

Karpin is constantly accompanied by bright drawdowns in the second half of the season:

• in the 2009 season Spartak lost the title race to Rubin;

• Before the 2013/14 winter break, Spartak was only one point behind the leaders Zenit and Lokomotiv, but in the spring they started with one point in two matches and a legendary defeat against Tosno in the Russian Cup (0:1) – a sharp decline led to the appointment of Dmitry Gunko;

• unsuccessfully prepared Mallorca during the winter break (three defeats in a row led to his resignation), and a year later he flew out of the FNL with Armavir;

• avoided clashes with Rostov only in the last round of RPL-2017/18;

• scored 11 points in the second half of RPL-2019/20;

• a year later again took 11 points in 11 matches.

Are Karpin’s teams always terrible in the spring?

Karpin’s first entry into Spartak: in 2009 he fell twice at a decisive moment, failed in 2010, left after the transitional championship

Karpin headed Spartak in the spring of 2009. At that time, the situation had not yet become critical: Mikael Laudrup scored 4 points in 4 matches. 

Karpin quickly worked with the team and scored 16 points before the summer break (only Moscow scored 18 more). So “Spartak” entrenched in third place and retained a chance for the championship.

Spartak powerfully turned on in the second part of the championship: after the scandalous departure of Vladimir Bystrov, he scored 22 points in 8 games and was only 1 point behind Rubin. But Spartak fell apart after a personal meeting with the Kazan team: they lost big (0:3), then tied with Dynamo (1:1) and lost to Saturn (1:2). After the mini-crisis, Spartak still came to his senses (15 points out of 15), and before the final rounds the gap was again reduced to a minimum.

But Spartak again eliminated itself: with the Wings, Martin Shtrantsl closed the serve of Anton Bobr, and Soslan Dzhanaev copied Alexander Filimonov (1: 2) – after that, Rubin was already carrying 4 points for 2 rounds before the end of the championship.

Before the derby with CSKA, Spartak believed that Anatoly Davydov’s Zenit would beat Rubin, but Kazan did not lose (0:0). Dzhanaev again failed to cope with a light blow (2:3), but an unfortunate mistake did not change anything in the championship race. In the last round, the unmotivated Spartak team lost in the majority to Zenit at Petrovsky (1:2).

As a result, Karpin practically did not deviate from the initial rate of scoring, but failed two important segments: after a great start, he let go of Rubin in a personal meeting, and then scored 0 points in the decisive rounds.