Dziuba will no longer be on the national team. He refused not Karpin, but the country

The reasoning behind the decision is complete nonsense.

Artyom Dzyuba refused a call to the Russian national team. He explained this not by the optimal form and by the fact that he did not want to take someone else’s place in such a situation. Do you also feel like they are lying to you?

Dziuba spent the whole of August working hard in training in order to return to his former self, worked most of all during the break for the matches of the national teams and finally showed himself against Rubin. He scored two, and after the game he said that he was “in good shape” now. And the very next day he says the opposite. The official version of the refusal of the national team is complete nonsense. And it’s even funny that it was confirmed Karpin…

Dziuba returned: scored two goals against Rubin, was featured in an interview. Is this Karpin’s influence?

“Today we had a conversation with Artyom, and he said that at the moment he was in non-optimal shape and decided to concentrate on Zenit’s matches,” the coach’s statement looks like. He also said that Dziuba will continue to be followed, and he remains on the list of candidates.

An amazing level of diplomacy for two emotional men. But let’s be honest: probably, after the decision was made, Dziuba will never even get into Karpin’s extended list again. Valery will not forget this ridiculous argument. I am sure that in his understanding Artyom threw not only the coach, which is already very critical, but also the country.

I believe that there were two important plots in this story that led to this ending. First, Karpin’s words about Fyodora Smolova and “the best striker in the country.” And then – a demonstrative emphasis that no one guarantees a place in the final list of Dziube. All this glued together a puzzle in Artyom’s head, which only he himself can explain in the future. Perhaps he was greatly offended. Perhaps he believes that Karpin will take him to the matches without a single chance to enter the field. But he definitely does not want to be a symbol, and not a participant in success / failure.

Dzyuba and Glushakov are together again. But how will they be in the role of spare?

In this situation, something else is depressing: the current Dziuba would definitely help Russia. Not Karpin with his headquarters, not himself, but the national team. The head coach himself said that Smolov is not always suitable when you need to play pragmatically, and not creatively. Artyom is more used to this. And if he squeezed his own ego and made a compromise, then in October he would enter the field.

Although without this ego, he would not have been Artyom Dzyuba – the hero of the country from 2018.

But now the former captain refused not to Karpin, but to the country that really needed it.