Valery Karpin, the head coach of the Russian national team, addressed speculation that he holds a biased attitude toward former Spartak Moscow striker Artem Dzyuba.
— The media often write that Dzyuba was never one of your favorites.
— That’s a bit exaggerated. What does “favorite” even mean? I’ve said before about Zakharian — that he’s not getting playing time? No coach or manager, unless they’re not tied to football, would be their own enemy. If you have a good, skilled operator, you keep him and let the other go. It’s the same in football. The coach is the manager who picks 11 players for a match. Does that mean the 11 you didn’t choose out of 22 aren’t favorites, and the ones you did are? That’s nonsense.
The idea that Dzyuba isn’t Karpin’s favorite is misleading. No one writes about the fact that Dzyuba played the most matches under me when I was at Spartak, — Karpin said in an interview on Nadezhda Strelets’ YouTube channel.
Recall that Karpin called up Dzyuba for the friendly match between Russia and Grenada (5-0). On the 43rd minute, Dzyuba found the net. That goal was his 31st for the Russian national team, making him the sole all-time leading scorer in the team’s history, surpassing Alexander Kerzhakov.
