Outpoll | Kokorin: Spartak signed me to spite Zenit, then treated me poorly.

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Kokorin: Spartak signed me to spite Zenit, then treated me poorly.

Kokorin: Spartak signed me to spite Zenit, then treated me poorly.

2 days ago7 min read6 comments

The world of football is often painted in the stark colors of tribal loyalty and bitter rivalry, but rarely do we get such a raw, unfiltered look into the psychological warfare that underpins it as we have with Alexander Kokorin’s recent revelations. The former Russian international, now with Greek side Aris, has pulled back the curtain on his tumultuous stint with Spartak Moscow, alleging the club signed him primarily 'to spite Zenit,' the very rival that had cast him aside, only to then treat him with a bewildering lack of professional respect that ultimately stymied his career resurgence.This isn't just a player airing grievances; it's a case study in how the beautiful game's darkest impulses—petty vengeance and internal power plays—can corrupt a sporting project at its very foundation. Kokorin’s assertion that Spartak’s motivation was a deliberate 'spit in the face' to Zenit speaks volumes about the toxic symbiosis between these two giants, a relationship less about sporting excellence and more about a perpetual, draining cold war where players become mere pawns in a grander, pettier game.One is immediately reminded of the Luis Figo transfer to Real Madrid, a move designed not just to strengthen a rival but to humiliate Barcelona, a transaction so laden with spite it literally resulted in a pig’s head being thrown onto the Camp Nou pitch. Yet, while Figo was embraced as a galactico, Kokorin describes a scenario where, after the initial act of acquisitional one-upmanship, he was left to languish, treated not like a multi-million euro asset but like a 'kid from the second team.' The core tragedy here, the fatal flaw in Spartak’s strategy that any football analyst would spot, is the staggering lack of follow-through. You don't invest significant capital in a player of Kokorin’s calibre, however controversial, simply for a momentary PR victory over your rival; you integrate him, you build your system around his strengths, you empower him to become the very weapon that consistently defeats the team you sought to annoy.Instead, Kokorin describes being embroiled in 'scandals out of nowhere,' a phrase that hints at a deeply dysfunctional club environment where discipline and performance are secondary to internal politics. The most damning anecdote involves the club's reported refusal to let him recover during a vacation, an instruction he claims came 'on the suggestion of Zarema,' presumably Zarema Salikhova, the wife of late owner Leonid Fedun, and was relayed through club executives.His retort, 'This is not how you work with me,' is the cry of a professional athlete who understands his own body and the requisite conditions for peak performance, a principle seemingly lost on a management structure taking cues from outside the traditional sporting hierarchy. His attempt to directly engage with Salikhova, met with a directive to route all communication through the sporting director, underscores a bureaucratic and impersonal structure that stifles player morale and creates needless friction.Even his encounter with the late Leonid Fedun himself is described with a telling emptiness: 'We met. but we didn’t talk.at all. ' This paints a picture of an owner distant from the human capital that constitutes his club, a stark contrast to the hands-on, man-management approach of figures like Sir Alex Ferguson, who knew the personal and professional state of every player in his squad was intrinsically linked to their on-pitch success.From an analytical standpoint, Spartak’s handling of the Kokorin affair represents a catastrophic failure in asset management. They acquired a player with a known high ceiling for performance and an equally high potential for disruption, yet they seemingly had no coherent plan for his integration or man-management.They activated the 'spite' clause of the transfer but neglected the 'performance' clause, thereby gaining a short-term public relations jab at Zenit while incurring a long-term financial and sporting loss. The entire saga serves as a cautionary tale for clubs worldwide: a transfer motivated by emotion over strategy is doomed from the start.It’s a lesson in how not to run a football club, where the pursuit of petty victories over a rival blinds you to the necessity of building a cohesive, supportive, and professional environment for the very players you expect to deliver you actual, tangible victories on the pitch. Kokorin’s story is more than just a personal lament; it is an exposé of a broken process, a reminder that in football, as in life, actions driven by spite rarely yield anything but bitterness and regret.