May is the last month of the longest season of the Russian Football Championship in the history of the country. Due to the transition to the "autumn-spring" system, it lasted a year and a half and followed a pattern that today's football fans are unlikely to see again in their lives. Thanks to this scheme, as many as four teams in the two top Russian leagues can consider themselves the leaders of the standings.
The entire tournament of the unique season was divided into two stages, the first of which ended in winter and proceeded as usual. Since spring, teams in the Russian Premier League have been divided into two groups, one of which is playing medals and the right to play in European cups next season in a two-round tournament. The second group identifies two teams leaving the "high society" of domestic football and two more, which will play transitional matches with applicants from the first league for the right to stay.
These two groups have their own tables, each with a leader and an outsider. The same scheme, with some changes, was applied in the first league, and now four teams of the two strongest leagues are leaders in their championship table.
In the hierarchy of all these tables, the most important is the one related to the first eight tournament. The strongest national football teams have only one round left before the end of the championship, but the leader of the table will not change - no one will be able to catch up with Zenit from St. Petersburg. This team, as in the previous season, has already become the Champion of Russia.
The same situation has developed in the standings of the second eight - Krasnodar is the current leader of the table and no one will be able to catch up with it until the end of the championship games.
In the first league of the National Football League, the table of the top eight is headed by the Mordovia club from the city of Saransk. And no one can move this leader of his segment of the championship table from the top row until the end of the tournament. Next year, the Mordovian team will play in the Premier League.
The lower table of the first division includes twelve teams and, unlike all other groups, they have three more rounds to play. Here Yenisey from Krasnoyarsk is in the lead, but he has only one point more than the next team - KAMAZ from Naberezhnye Chelny.
