|
|
| ANDREY ARSHAVIN BEST IN 2009 Andrey Arshavin has been voted the best player in Russia and CIS countries in 2009 to receive the third consecutive Zvezda Award.
Russian striker Andrey Arshavin became the main star of the year for the third straight year to set the record of Sport Express’ Zvezda award. He collected 204 votes to earn the first place in the standings, while Igor Akinfeev and Andrey Pyatov finished on the second and third places with 128 and 56 points respectively.
The Arsenal man talked about main ups and downs of the previous season in an interview to Sport Express.
"This year my victory in Zvezda award was with a bitter taste and everyone knows the reasons", said Arshavin. "The first victory was memorable because it was the first one, the second was on background of Euro-2008. Unfortunately, this time it was darkened by Russia’s failure against Slovenia".
"This season it was not necessary to demonstrate really fantastic football to earn Zvezda award, so it means that competition was much easier. Though in case Ukraine reached the World Championships, Ukrainian players would have won this award".
"I would definitely have included Igor Akinfeev to the list of best players of the previous season. I would also mention Zhirkov, UEFA Cup winners Pyatov and Chigrinsky and of course Vladimir Bystrov".
"The future president of the Russian Football Union Sergey Fursenko will need to think about development of children football, I think it is one of the most important tasks nowadays".
"He will also need to decide question of the head coach of our national team, who will lead us in the coming World Cup qualifying campaign".
"Guus Hiddink created absolutely unique microclimate in the team and made players respect themselves, which helps us be more confident on the pitch".
"Of course there are reasons of our loss to Slovenia, and the first one is poor performance of the captain and leader, i.e. me. And the second reason is that we stuck in the midfield at the end of the first half and beginning of the second one".
"One more serious factor was that Slovenia physically looked better than Russia in both games".sport.express |
| | |
