The city mini-football (futsal) team “Sigma-K” in the third and fourth games of the First League of the Russian Championship 2024/2025 hosted guests from Chebarkul – the team “Zvezda” and “Forenergo” from Uvelsky – at the E. Bulatov Sports and Recreation Center.
Author: Alexander Wolf
Photo: author
In the “Southern Urals” zone, 11 futsal teams participate in all-Russian competitions: “Europe” (Ozersk), “Sigma-K” (Kopeysk), “Forenergo” (Uvelsky), “Zvezda” (Chebarkul) and seven from Chelyabinsk – “Mir” “, “ChelGU”, “Dynamo”, “Shturman-1”, “SUSU”, “Southern Ural-D”, “Metal Base”.
After 4 rounds, the regional team “Shturman-1” is in the lead. Next come the student sports team “ChelGU” and “Mir”, our guys are in fourth place. The championship will last until April 30 next year, so everything is relative for now.
In the opening game of the season, which started on October 1, 2024, Sigma-K drew 2-2 with the South Ural-D club away. Then she lost with a big score of 1-6 to the pilots from Chelyabinsk (Navigator-1).
On November 9, we won our first victory 3-2 in a home match with Chebarkul Zvezda. Well, the truth is that houses and walls help. There are no empty seats in the spectator stands in the city sports hall. The enthusiastic support of local fans, including drums and vuvuzelas, is something. The girls from the Grace cheer sports club successfully fill the pauses of the match and warm up the fans. You won’t be bored.
In the second home game we hosted Uvelsky Forenergo. The match turned out to be very tough. In the first period, the opponent created a powerful defense and periodically launched dagger attacks on the Sigma goal. When the whistle blew, inviting the players to break, the numbers 0-2 were on the scoreboard. It would have been interesting to listen to what the head coach of Sigma-K, Master of Sports of Russia Viktor Stepnov, said to his players in the locker room, but already in the fifth minute of the second twenty minutes, Alexander Zakharov reduced the score to 1-2. And then, under the deafening support of the home arena, Vorobyov, Pushilkin, Novikov, Komlach and Furtsev. The overall score is 6-4! The second victory in a row and moving up one place in the standings.
The Sigma-K team brings together the best football players from city teams who annually play in both the summer and winter Kopeisk mini-football championships. Young people are not older than 30 years old. The team also included several students from the city’s Children’s and Youth Football School. I managed to talk to one of them during a break in the match. This is Anatoly Tokarev, number 16.
Tolya has been playing football at Children’s Sports School No. 4 for 10 years. What attracts him most about this game as a striker is that it is a high-speed game, which also requires quick decision-making: accept a pass, handle the ball, pass it to a friend, or shoot on target. It’s not uncommon, he says, that everything can be decided in a moment.
“We’re playing well,” says a 16-year-old boy, an 11th grade student at school No. 1, confidently, although the scoreboard is 0-2 and we’re “flying.” “We’ll try to play more intensely after the break and I think everything will work out.” We will definitely win, because today we have incredible fan support.
And the guy was not mistaken. This is a real, sporty, fighting spirit. To win, you must believe in victory.
The next game is away with the championship leader, the Shturman-1 team from ChVVAKUSH, which is firmly entrenched in the first line of the tournament table. The next home matches are expected in mid-January 2025. In order, dear readers, to feel the spirit of real, big football, do not be lazy to come to the E. Bulatov Sports and Sports Complex and cheer for ours. You won’t regret it.
In conclusion, I would like to paraphrase a well-known statement by Nikolai Ozerov, a commentator of all times and peoples of the USSR. Commenting on the match between the national teams of the Soviet Union and Canada in the 1972 Super Series, where overseas professionals, losing, began to openly be rude to our hockey players on the ice, Nikolai Nikolaevich said with annoyance: “We don’t need this kind of hockey!” This phrase became a symbol for many years. If today this person was reporting from the Kopeis sports and sports complex, he would probably end it with the words: “We need this kind of football!”
