Gloomy hosts Russia fear they will miss out on the fun at their own World Cup party

Jonathan Wilson14 June 2018

Wherever you go in Russia, you will be hard pressed to find a fan who believes the host nation can make it through their group, let alone win the World Cup.

Speak to anyone — people on trains, people at airports, hotel staff, waiters and taxi drivers — and you will not find much optimism.

“Everything’s bad,” said the front page of Sport-Express last week. The challenge for now is simply to avoid being the worst-ever hosts, which means doing better than South Africa in 2010, who took four points but still fell at the first hurdle. They remain the only host nation to fail to make it through the group stage of the tournament they laid on — and even they had the joy of Siphiwe Tshabalala’s opening goal in the first game and some moments of hope.

There is a serious danger Russia will not even manage that. The draw has been relatively kind and Russia at least start against Saudi Arabia, the lowest-ranked team apart from themselves in the tournament.

But while that is an opportunity, it also means great pressure comes with tomorrow’s game: fail to win in front of their president, Vladimir Putin, and assorted dignitaries following the opening ceremony and, with games against Egypt and Uruguay to come, it will be very difficult to reach the last 16.

“I am not a therapist trying to reassure people,” said Russia coach Stanislav Cherchesov after a 1-1 draw against Turkey in the nation’s final pre-tournament friendly. “You can see that we have taken a step forward. Our main task is to believe in ourselves. We also need the fans to believe in us.”

Good luck with that. If the draw against Turkey was a step forward, it suggests just how bad things had become. They have not won any of their past seven games and Cherchesov has won just five of his 20 matches since being handed the job.

AP

He had initially promised Russia would play with a back three, before changing his mind two games ago and opting for a 4-2-3-1. It may be that the shift ends up salvaging some pride from Russia but to be forced into such a radical rethink a fortnight before the World Cup suggests a manager desperately looking for solutions, casting the pieces up in the air and hoping they fall in some sort of coherent pattern. The former Manchester United winger Andrei Kanchelskis described the tweak as “ridiculous and unreal”.

That is not necessarily to blame Cherchesov. The decline in Russian football since they reached the semi-finals of Euro 2008 has been precipitous and it is telling that as many as four of this squad — including the former Chelsea left-back Yuri Zhirkov — played in that tournament; new talent is not emerging.

There would be five but Cherchesov fell out with Igor Denisov when coaching him at Dinamo Moscow in 2015. Of the four, the most remarkable inclusion is Sergey Ignashevich, who is 38 and had to be called out of international retirement for one final mission after a spate of defensive withdrawals.

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The Berezutsky twins, Vasili and Aleksei, remain retired, while Georgy Dzhikiya and Viktor Vasin have both torn knee ligaments and Ruslan Kambolov has a calf problem, although he had been accused of doping violations before a case was dropped in April.

In that sense, shifting from three central defenders to two was forced on Cherchesov, but the change has upset the one bit of the side that had offered glimmers of youth and promise: a potential midfield triangle of Roman Zobnin holding, the gifted 22-year-old Aleksandr Golovin and Alan Dzagoev, who, at 27, still shows glimpses that he might yet become the player widely compared to Frank Lampard when CSKA Moscow signed him a decade ago.

It now looks as though Zobnin will be used alongside another anchor, with Golovin cast out to the left flank if he and Dzagoev are both included. But tactical considerations, perhaps, are of less significance than a fundamental lack of faith.

If Cherchesov can stop his fellow countrymen responding to questions about their national side with a smile and a shrug, he will have at least achieved something.

In Pictures | Countdown to the Fifa World Cup 2018

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