Magomed Ozdoyev - the rise of a midfield phoenix

Magomed Ozdoyev is special.

He is very special because of his background. I have been watching him all along since he first admitted into the Russian national team. But he is more than a player - he is everything, a phoenix of the time.

He was born in Grozny, November 1992. At the time, the city was the epicentre of the widespread Chechen uprising, demanding the Russian government to go out and Chechnya to be an independent country. One of the leading figures was Dzhokhar Dudayev, a former pilot who served in Afghanistan. When he only aged two, the Chechen War officially broke out, forcing the Ozdoyev family to flee to Sunzha, in the neighbouring Ingushetia. Magomed survived the war, but it was a difficult experience for the player.

Magomed himself was born in Chechnya, but he is ethnically Ingush, a close relative of the Chechens. Unlike the majority of Caucasus families, the Ozdoyev family had a nice, low-profile yet proud and tragic past. His grandfather was the pilot Murad Ozdoyev, a World War II ace fighting for the Red Army. Murad was a hero in the war, fighting bravely before getting captured by the Nazis where they sent him to concentration camps in Poland and Czechoslovakia from 1944 to 1945. Unfortunately, Joseph Stalin, who was also of Caucasus descent himself, had an adverse feeling to the Ingush and Chechens, ordering the brutal deportation in 1944. To cut off his connection, his family had the state report telling that Murad was killed in action. When he returned in May 1945, he was nominated for the Hero of the Soviet Union, but instead, the Stalinist authorities, shocked by his survival, ordered him to be sent to Central Asia instead. Only when Stalin died in 1953 had Murad returned home in Nazran and lived a quiet life, had a family and a son named Kazbek. Kazbek is the cousin of Magomed's father Mustafa, thus confirming the family link.

Murad was belatedly bestowed the Hero of the Russian Federation title by President Boris Yeltsin in 1995 when Magomed was only three. Murad died in 1999, unable to have the chance to see his grandson making into a professional football career. Growing up, Magomed only recalled the story of his grandpa throughout his father and a few meetings before Murad's death.

But Magomed had a different passion. While children from the Caucasus would grow up fighting in the street as part of the tradition, Magomed embraced football. Mustafa himself was an amateur footballer before retirement, thus he was aware of his son's passion. Immediately, Mustafa encouraged Magomed to become a good player, training him hard and ultimately, gained affection from Terek Grozny, which is owned by the Kadyrov family. He transferred to Dynamo Kyiv before broke the youth rank to join the senior side of Lokomotiv Moscow in 2010.

His rise attracted then-Russian coach Dick Advocaat, who summoned him for the Russian squad the first time ever, but didn't play any matches and was excluded from the national team for Euro 2012. He didn't appear in any national games until 2014 when he represented Russia in a September friendly against Azerbaijan. By this time, his performance in Lokomotiv had reached a new low due to injuries and was loaned, before permanently bought, by Rubin Kazan. Due to the inconsistent form and various injuries, Magomed Ozdoyev was only selected in various Euro 2016 qualifying matches as well as 2018 World Cup warm-up games. By then, Rubin was also struggling for relevance in the Russian Premier League.

However, his life changed when the new manager of the national side came. Stanislav Cherchesov, an Ossetian who represented Russia in World Cup and European Championship, started to pay attention to Magomed. Cherchesov entrusted Magomed and the Ossetian immediately pulled him back into the position of central midfield rather than a defending midfield, which was proven a major breakthrough. Previously, he played as a defender, but was more active in term of attacking, thus exposing to the team's fragilities. By balancing him in the midfield, he was capable of gathering space so his teammates could have more control of the field. It gave him the explosion in the last season with Rubin, where his effective midfield vision allowed him to transfer to Russia's giant Zenit.

As he thought his career would be over, he revived. Like a phoenix, he rebuilt his fitnesses and performance, ultimately became the newest prospect of the country's football team. Not disappoint, coach Cherchesov, after the successful 2018 World Cup, targeted Ozdoyev as part of the revamping project for the national team. Magomed became a frequent starter for the Russian national team, alongside fellow Muslim players Ilzat Akhmetov, Rifat Zhemaletdinov and Zelimkhan Bakayev. Among all, he made big contributions on Russia's successful Euro 2020 qualification. The same time, he won five major trophies with his club Zenit, cementing his place as the most successful Ingush footballer in the history.

Now, his hard work gets the first pay. He was included into the final 26 of the Russian side preparing for Euro 2020, the first big football tournament in the history for the player. Perhaps more importantly, he is the first Caucasian Muslim to take part in this European Championship. Given the antagonistic relations between the Russian state and the Caucasus Muslim people in the history, one can expect that Ozdoyev would deliver something in order to heal the wound.

Magomed can do something from it, maybe. He scored his first international goal for the Russian Bears in the city of Grozny, where he was born, helping Russia won 1-0 against Romania. He can carry the cherry more.

That's how Magomed Ozdoyev, a phoenix, has risen from the ashes of the past.