Salavat Yulaev hosted Lada in a club friendly on 18 August, and the visitors took all three points with a 6-3 victory. The match at Ufa gave both sides a chance to test their shape ahead of the new campaign, though the result spoke clearly enough.
Lada came into the game carrying little momentum. They had lost their last four outings in sequence — 0-5 to Khabarovsk, 3-8 against Dinamo Minsk, 2-3 at Magnitogorsk, 1-3 to Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, and 2-6 versus Spartak Moscow. To be fair, friendly results rarely predict much, but the pattern was hard to ignore.
Salavat, by contrast, had been finding their feet. Their last five matches read as four wins and one loss: 4-1 over Barys, 2-1 against Nizhnekamsk, 3-1 versus Nizhny Novgorod, 4-3 over Bars Kazan, and 2-1 at Dinamo Minsk. They had extended their unbeaten run to five, and looked comfortable against opposition they had faced before.
The final scoreline told a different story. Six goals for Lada against three for the hosts suggests the visitors found their rhythm when it mattered, while Salavat could not contain the flow. The gap between expectation and reality was noticeable, even in a setting where results carry no weight.
What stands out is not the number of goals but the shift in confidence. Lada ended a run of four straight defeats, and Salavat's unbeaten streak came to an end on this evening. By then, both sides would be looking ahead to the proper season rather than dwelling on a friendly.