The past couple of seasons have seen an influx of Nordic and Scandinavian talent moving to Russian clubs. The majority of the players have been Swedish with Rasmus Elm, Kim Kallström and Pontus Wernbloom being some of the biggest names, but Iceland have also been represented by Solvi Ottesen and Ragnar Sigurdsson while Norwegian Stefan Strandberg has followed in the footsteps of Erik Hagen who played for Zenit between 2005 and 2008. Last but not least, Finland is currently represented by CSKA star Roman Eremenko.
There is however one country far behind it’s brothers at the moment – Denmark. Michael Lumb played three games for Zenit between 2010 and 2012 and remains the only Dane to ever play in the RFPL.
What Denmark lack in numbers, they make up for in fame. In 2008, Michael Laudrup, who was appointed the best Nordic player ever last year in front of Zlatan Ibrahimovich and Peter Schmeichel, was appointed head coach of Spartak Moscow.
Two-thirds into the 2008 season, Laudrup was hired to replace Stanislav Cherchesov who was sacked after an embarrassing 4-1 defeat to archrivals Dinamo Kyiv in the Champions League qualification.
Laudrup, who spent most of his career in Spain, where he played for Barcelona and Real Madrid, and was heavily influenced by the Spanish way of playing football, immediately hit it off with Spartak sports director Valery Karpin, who also played the majority of his career in Spain. In fact, it was this Spanish connection that secured Laudrup the job. “I don’t speak Russian,” he told Danish newspaper Tipsbladet after he was hired, “but that isn’t the main reason. We have the same way of thinking. We love the same kind of football, and that means a lot.”
Valery Karpin and Michael Laudrup.
Before moving to Spartak, Laudrup had made a name for himself as coach at first his Danish childhood club Brondby IF, where he won one league title and two cup titles during his four years. After working as assistant coach on the Danish national team, Brondby was Laudrup’s first head coaching job. After leaving Denmark, Laudrup was in charge of Spanish side Getafe for a season before being forced to resign, despite leading the club to the cup final and the quarter final of the UEFA Cup.
During his time in charge of both Brøndby and Getafe, Laudrup was accompanied by his assistant coach John ‘Faxe’ Jensen, who, as a player, scored in the 1992 Euro final and later represented Arsenal, but Jensen turned down Laudrup’s offer to join him in Russia. Instead, Laudrup’s assistant became Igor Lediakhov, who represented Sporting Gijon and Eibar during his eight years in Spain as a player, which just strengthened the Spanish connection between the men in charge of the first team.
When Laudrup joined Spartak at the beginning of September, the league had just entered it’s decisive phase, and the Red-Whites were placed third, which would grant qualification for the Champions League, nine points behind Rubin Kazan in first, and so Laudrup set some ambitious goals for the rest of the year.
“We have three top priorities,” he said, ”We have to qualify for next year’s Champions League. That’s very important. We need to reach the UEFA Cup group stage and then we need to perform well in the cup.”
Unfortunately, for Laudrup and Spartak, the club never came close to meeting the goals set at his appointment. The club did reach the UEFA Cup group stage, but failed to advance from an otherwise manageable group after losing to Dutch side NEC Nijmegen at home while also throwing a 2-0 lead away against Tottenham in the last game.
The results in the league weren’t much better. Spartak won just three of their last ten games, and finished the season in eighth place, the worst position in four years, ten points from the third place, and 16 points behind the champions Rubin.
One of the few highlights during Laudrup’s first months in charge of the Red-Whites was a 1-0 derby victory away against CSKA, while Spartak also managed to qualify for the quarterfinals in the Russian cup the following year after beating Shinnik Yaroslav away.
After his poor start at the club, Laudrup finally got the chance to influence the squad during the 2009 preseason. “Of course the team needs to be changed,” he told Danish newspaper BT after a 3-1 defeat to Zenit in the last round of the season, “And these changes will most likely be plenty and drastic.”
In the months leading up to the season, Spartak were heavily linked with some big names, including Laudrup’s former favourites from Getafe Esteban Granero and Cata Diaz, but according to Life.ru the Red-Whites couldn’t match their salary demands. The same source reported that Spartak owner Leonid Fedun had promised Laudrup a large transfer budget in order to strengthen the squad, but failed to live up to his promises.
In 2008 Fedun, who made his fortune with oil company Lukoil, was struggling with the impact of the international financial crisis. According to Lukoil’s annual report from 2008, the company’s share price lost 63.2 % of its value in 2008, with the biggest fall coming between July and December.
When the season began, Laudrup’s ‘drastic changes’ didn’t amount to more than the signing of the two relatively unknown Brazilians Alex and Rafael Carioca.
Even though Spartak started the 2009 season without any major changes, the Danish boss was optimistic, and after a chat with the squad, he announced that the goal was, once again, to finish in the top three.
Spartak got off to a good start to the new season as they drew 1-1 at home against Zenit in the opening fixture. However, three games later, Laudrup was sacked. Spartak managed just one victory in the following three games, and after losing 3-0 at home in the cup to their rivals Dinamo Moscow, Laudrup was dismissed, just seven months after he got the job.
“Michael Laudrup didn’t have the trust of the players anymore,” sports director Valery Karpin told Sporten.dk after the dismissal of Laudrup, “We had to correct the bad start to the season. Our bad start wasn’t all Michael’s fault, but he knows the game, and he knows that it is the coach who is in the danger zone because you can’t sack the players.”
After sacking Laudrup, Karpin took over as interim head coach, finishing second in the league and thus meeting Laudrup’s goal for the season.
After leaving Moscow, Laudrup explained his failure with ‘the lack of linguistic understanding’, but he might as well have added ‘lack of understanding of Russian mentality and football culture’. Nevertheless, the language barrier turned out to be a bigger obstacle than expected, and that the use of a translator made it difficult for the Dane to connect with his players, which explains why they turned against him as the results failed.
Laudrup is what many would call a ‘modern coach’ who allows his players a great deal of freedom, which turned out to be a disaster in Russia. “The talented Russian players don’t demand a lot of themselves, so the coach has to do it for them.” Russian football player Mark Ryutin told Russian Football News two years ago, and this was what Laudrup failed to understand.
Laudrup has also been accused of poor preparation for the Russian challenge, exemplified by the fact that he often looked like a man with little knowledge of his opponents as well as the strengths of his own team.
The dismissal of Laudrup is however also telling a story about Spartak. The Red-Whites are infamous for their impatience with head coaches, and sacking Laudrup four games into the season did seem a bit rushed, despite his flaws and mistakes.
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