Red Bull Salzburg vs Krasnodar will be in the shadow of the sudden departure of Krasnodar’s manager, Oleg Kononov. The long-standing manager announced that he would step down on September 13.
Kononov has been in charge of Krasnodar since 2013, and has guided the club to a fifth, third, and fourth place finish in the last three years (read Krasnodar’s Europa League preview here). Krasnodar had a slow start this season, as the club managed just eight points from six games, but slow starts have almost become a tradition for the side from southern Russia.
Yet, Kononov felt that this time he would not able to overturn a bad start to the season, and stepped down. Kononov has called his three years at Krasnodar the happiest time of his life.
For these three years, Kononov had enjoyed the relative comfort of managing a team that is owned by the oligarch, Sergey Galitsky, who prioritizes long-term goals rather than short-term results. This further indicates that the initiative to leave the club came from Kononov rather than from Galitsky, who would have been more than happy to continue the Krasnodar project with Kononov at the helm.
His assistant, Igor Shalimov, will now, on an interim basis, succeed Kononov. Shalimov has already told the Russian media that he feels responsible for the club’s recent run of poor results, and that he will do his utmost to improve Krasnodar’s results.
Shalimov will make his debut against Red Bull Salzburg. Red Bull, for the longest time, has been considered the crown jewel of the Red Bull football empire. But since the promotion of RasenBallsport Leipzig, another club controlled by Red Bull, to the German Bundesliga, Red Bull Salzburg has increasingly played second fiddle to their bigger brothers from Germany.
Overall, 12 players have been moved back and forth between RB Leipzig and Red Bull Salzburg and, in almost every case, money also exchanged hands. Leipzig, for example, paid €14 million for Naby Keïta but, in reality, the transfer sums paid between the two clubs are just for appearance sake, as the money stays within the Red Bull cooperation—RB Leipzig has to appear to be an independent club in order to avoid sanctions by the DFL and UEFA.
But Salzburg has increasingly seen the departure of their key players to Leipzig. Aside from the above-mentioned Keïta, Salzburg also lost Benno Schmitz and the Brazilian Bernardo to Leipzig this summer.
Leipzig’s management will also watch Salzburg’s performance in the Europa League closely in order to identify further players that can make the cut in Germany.
Indeed, Salzburg’s squad includes several talented players that could play in Europe’s top leagues and, despite having lost several key players, should be more than up to challenging Krasnodar on Thursday night in Salzburg.
Possible Line-ups
Red Bull Salzburg:
Formation: 4-2-3-1
Walke – Ulmer, Caleta-Car, Paulo Miranda, Lainer – Upamecano, Laimer – Lazaro, Berisha, Wanderson – Soriano
Manager: Óscar García
Krasnodar:
Formation: 4-3-3-
Kritsyuk – Petrov, Martynovich, Naldo, Kaleshin – Podberezkin, Gazinsky, Eboue – Laborde, Smolov, Ari
Manager: Igor Shalimov
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