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On Sunday, the traditional 13th edition of the Interplay Cup tournament ended in Moscow. The 2005 cup was won by the Russian champion Deividas Cesnauskis' club "Lokomotiv", who defeated Baku's team "Neftchi" in the final.
On Friday, in the semi-finals, "Lokomotiv" after a tough battle defeated the Lithuanian champions FBK "Kaunas", who missed two penalty kicks from 11 meters, while the best team of Azerbaijan "Neftchi" won against the not strongest lineup of Kiev's "Dynamo" and became the only team to win all matches.
Moscow 2 - 1 Baku "Neftchi" 14' [0 - 1] Zaur Tagizade 41' [1 - 1] Dmitriy Loskov 83' [2 - 1] Sergey Omelyanchuk
However, the successful streak of the Azerbaijanis ended in the final. Although the guests unexpectedly took the lead after Zaur Tagizade's goal in the 14th minute, nearing the end of the first half, Moscow's captain Dmitri Loskov equalized the score.
The winning goal for the Moscow team was scored by Sergey Omeljančiukas with thirteen minutes left until the end of the match, so "Lokomotiv" maintained their lead and won the Interplay Cup. Deividas Cesnauskis also played the entire final match for the winning team, but was very close to scoring twice, however, in both cases, his shot hit the crossbar.
This is the first time that "Lokomotiv" has won this tournament - before, from 1993 to 2002, the cup was won either by Moscow's "Spartak" (6 times) or Kiev's "Dynamo" (5 times). However, after these teams began sending in reserve players for the tournament in 2003, their dominance was interrupted by Tiraspol's "Sheriff", and in 2004 by Tbilisi's "Dinamo."
