Ten-man Lokomotiv Moscow held on for a 3-2 win against battling Premier League debutants Mordovia Saransk on Friday, in a low-key season opener in the league’s smallest stadium.
The match was ex-Croatia coach Slaven Bilic’s first match in charge of the Railwaymen, who recovered after conceding the first goal but struggled to close out the match against a team playing their first Premier League game.
"The team showed character," Bilic said of his men. "I'm satisfied with the game they played."
Mordovia coach Boris Chirva was philosophical about his team's performance.
"It was a good debut," he said, adding: "We had a collapse in the first half when we conceded three goals."
Mordovia played largely on the counter-attack and the strategy paid dividends on the 19th minute as Kirill Panchenko found the target in his first top-flight fixture.
Maxim Rogov found Panchenko 30 yards out and he sent a fierce curling shot into the top corner of Miroslav Lobantsev’s goal to give the hosts the lead.
Two goals in the space of five minutes turned the game around for Lokomotiv as first Dmitry Torbinsky then Magomed Ozdoev found the target, with Mordovia goalkeeper David Yurchenko at fault on both occasions.
On 29 minutes, Yurchenko parried a Lokomotiv header into the back of one of his own defenders and the ricochet left Dmitry Torbinsky with a tap-in from two yards out to level the scores.
For Lokomotiv’s second, Roman Pavlyuchenko and Alexander Samedov combined to set up Magomed Ozdoev and the Russia under-21 midfielder fired a long-range effort past Yurchenko, who failed to react.
There was nothing Yurchenko could do about the third on 38 minutes as Roman Shishkin’s cross found new signing Vedran Corluka who towered above two defenders to send a bullet header into the top corner for a debut goal.
Mordovia struck back on 62 minutes through Evgeny Osipov as the midfielder controlled Panchenko’s corner with his thigh before poking the ball past Lobantsev to make the score 3-2 to Lokomotiv.
The team from the capital were then forced to cling on with ten men after Ozdoev received a straight red card on 87 minutes for pushing Yuri Kuleshov to the ground, with Bilic visibly angered by the decision to send off the young midfielder.
After a cagey start, the ball fell to Pavlyuchenko six yards out on 12 minutes, but the former Tottenham Hotspur man scuffed his shot and it was easily cleared.
Seconds later, ex-West Ham United striker Victor Obinna belted a curling left-foot shot wide from 25 yards.
After Torbinsky had equalized, Panchenko tried for a second long-range strike and sliced well wide, but Lobantsev, perhaps wary of how he had conceded the first goal, still dived.
At 3-1 down, Mordovia refused to give up, with Rogov’s low header forcing a diving save from Lobantsev.
After Osipov brought the hosts back into contention in the second half, Lokomotiv had chances to restore their two-goal lead, but failed to take them.
Denis Glushakov hit a shot wide on 73 minutes, before forcing a save from Yurchenko with a free-kick six minutes later.
After Ozdoev was sent off, Mordovia surged forward in the dying minutes, with Roman Kontsedalov striking the ball over the bar as his teammates appealed for a penalty for an apparent kick in the box by Lokomotiv’s Andrei Yeshchenko.
In stoppage time, Panchenko swung in a free-kick from a dangerous position that just missed the charging Sergei Kuznetsov at the near post.
