Zenit 2-1 Lokomotiv: Shooting a Comeback at Gazprom Arena

Lokomotiv Moscow are the kind of visitor I pack my best lens for. They bring pace, they don’t sit deep, and that usually means goals at both ends and plenty to shoot. I set up behind the goal Zenit would attack in the second half, a small bet that the story of Round 8 would be written there. For 18 minutes nothing happened in my frame. Then Alexander Rudenko finished for the visitors at the far end and I got the shot every home photographer dreads: an away celebration, tiny in the distance, framed by a very quiet home stand.

Half-time is for checking cards, swapping batteries and reminding myself that matches are long. Two minutes into the second half Kevin Andrade made the reminder redundant. The equaliser came at my end, the roar arrived a fraction after the ball hit the net, and the celebration filled the whole viewfinder. That’s what the bet was for. Twenty minutes of open football followed, the kind where the camera never leaves your eye, and on 70 minutes Luis Henrique put Zenit in front. The frame I kept: arms out, head back, and the stands behind him turned into one blue smear of movement.

The last stretch of a one-goal game is a different job. Lokomotiv pushed, and every ball into the box could have flipped the gallery from “comeback” to “nice try”. So I shoot two stories at once: the visitors' set pieces and the home fans who have already decided the win is theirs. The whistle goes, 2-1, and the best frames of the closing minutes are faces on the bench and in the front rows, not anything happening on the grass. Editing later, it’s obvious the goals make the headlines, but the match lives in the reactions between them. Saint Petersburg on a matchday like this is why I do sports photography at all.

See the full gallery with the best moments from Zenit vs Lokomotiv here: Zenit vs Lokomotiv.