Russia Team Preview – Overview
Russia will be competing in their final tournament before hosting the biggest football party of them all when they stage the FIFA World Cup in two years time and it is important for them to head start to build a platform which they can build on to ensure a big run in front of their own people in 2018. A decent run in this tournament would be a good start.
Russia were runners up to Austria in qualifying. There is no shame in that. They finished above Sweden which is a fair effort but I just wonder if this side is for the here and now or with two years time in mind. The squad lacks a genuine star name who could light the tournament up but that isn’t always a bad thing.
Statistics
Best Performance – Semi-finals in 2008
Previous Appearances – 4 (1996, 2004, 2008 & 2012)
Qualified – Group G Runner-up
Qualifying Record
P-10 W-6 D-2 L-2 GF-21 GA-5 PTS-20
Fixtures
England vs Russia – Saturday 11th June, kickoff 20:00 at Stade Vélodrome, Marseille
Russia vs Slovakia – Wednesday 16th June, kickoff 14:00 at Stade Pierre-Mauroy, Lille
Russia vs Wales – Monday 20th June, kickoff 20:00 at Stadium Municipal, Toulouse, Toulouse
Squad
Manager: Leonid Slutsky
Goalkeepers: Igor Akinfeev (CSKA Moscow), Guilherme (Lokomotiv Moscow), Yuri Lodygin (Zenit)
Defenders: Alexei Berezutski (CSKA Moscow), Vasili Berezutski (CSKA Moscow), Sergei Ignashevich (CSKA Moscow), Dimitri Kombarov (Spartak Moscow), Roman Neustadter (Schalke), Georgi Schennikov (CSKA Moscow), Roman Shishkin (Lokomotiv Moscow), Igor Smolnikov (Zenit)
Midfielders: Igor Denisov (Dynamo Moscow), Denis Glushakov (Spartak Moscow), Alexander Golovin (CSKA Moscow), Oleg Ivanov (Terek Grozny), Pavel Mamaev (Krasnodar), Alexander Samedov (Lokomotiv Moscow), Oleg Shatov (Zenit), Roman Shirokov (CSKA Moscow)
Forwards: Artem Dzyuba (Zenit), Alexander Kokorin (Zenit), Fedor Smolov (Krasnodar), Dimitri Torbinski (Krasnodar)
Betting
Russia have only ever come out of their group once in seven previous tournaments. The time they did come out of the group was in Austria and Switzerland in 2008 where they made it all the way to the semi-finals of the Euros but that was a pretty special Russian side who played lovely attacking football. Since then this side has had the Fabio Capello stamp put on it and it takes some time to recover from that as England can testify.
Russia were pretty poor in the World Cup two years ago but a lot of that was down to Capello I’m sure so I would expect them to improve but I’m still not sure they come out of the group. I don’t see them finishing above England and I’m not sure they finish above both Wales and Slovakia. They don’t score many goals as a rule and don’t have an out and out goalscorer of any note so even if they finish third they are no guarantee to go through. At 5/2 I think it is worth chancing that Russia exit in the group again.
Tips
WON – Back Russia to be eliminated in the group stage for a 2/10 stake at 3.50 with Coral
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