Sochi - detailed statistics and predictions for the upcoming matches
In the summer of 2018, the owner and main investor of the St. Petersburg Dynamo, Boris Rotenberg, decided to transfer the club to Sochi, effectively creating a new legal entity. Many players, coaches and club employees terminated their contracts with Dynamo and signed agreements with FC Sochi.
From the St. Petersburg Dynamo Sochi inherited a place in the FNL, having received at its disposal the handsome Fisht stadium in Sochi, which was built specifically for the World Cup. In the debut season, the wards of Alexander Tochilin won a ticket to the company of the strongest teams in the country.
Sochi also adopted club colors from St. Petersburg Dynamo, relying on white and blue colors, both in the home kit and in the away kit. However, what can be demanded from such a young club, which is just taking its first steps in big football.
Officially, there is no such position in the club, but formally the well-known Russian businessman Boris Rotenberg, who is the main investor of FC Sochi and the main initiator of the move from St. Petersburg, is considered the president of the club. At the same time, it should not be said that this is not a person far from football, because Rotenberg is directly involved in the staffing of the club, analyzes the transfer policy and makes ambitious plans for the future.
The young club cannot yet boast of great success, therefore, the achievement of the loudest achievement in its history can safely be called the finish on the fifth line of the RPL in the 2020/2021 season, and this is an opportunity to debut in European competitions.
In its debut season at the professional level, Sochi finished second in the FNL and won a direct pass to the elite division. True, the club understood perfectly well that there was nothing else but the struggle for survival, while they did not shine in the RPL. Actually, it happened so. The southerners unsuccessfully started the 2019/2020 season and finished the first round at the bottom of the standings, but the change of head coach quickly yielded results - under the leadership of Vladimir Fedotov, the newcomer of the championship climbed to twelfth place, two points ahead of the play-off zone.
In the 2020/2021 championship, it became clear from the first rounds that Sochi was not going to dwell in the second half of the standings, and for several rounds the southerners even went in the top three, clearly declaring their European Cup ambitions. In general, Fedotov's team passed the tournament distance very smoothly, and in the final segment withstood the competition from Moscow CSKA and Dynamo and defended the fifth place, which gave a pass to the second qualifying round of the new European Cup tournament - the Conference League.
In the 2019/2020 season, the former coach of Orenburg, Vladimir Fedotov, was called to save the disastrous situation of Sochi, who took the team in last place and as the main contender to be eliminated from the Russian Premier League. He managed to form an indisputable team and develop the secret capabilities of many players, who were often already written off, and the team made a dizzying leap from an outsider into the European Cup zone in a year and a half. The finish in fifth place in the 2020/2021 championship and the European Cup ticket to the Conference League was the natural result of this stage of Fedotov's work at the club.
20 goals scored is a modest figure for a football player who is the top scorer in the history of the club, but in the case of FC Sochi this is quite applicable. True, Maxim Barsov scored 19 out of 20 goals in the first division, while in the elite he pleased only with one goal.