The headlines of the Russian press on Sunday tell a story in themselves.
“A Dead Team” said Sovetsky Sport. “It’s a disgrace” was Gazeta.ru’s take, while Sport Express simply wrote “‘Favourites’…”.
How did it come to this?
Expectations amongst most pundits were not high for Russia coming into the tournament. They had stuttered through qualifying and were sticking with an ageing group of players that had failed even to qualify for the 2010 World Cup and whose bright patches were overshadowed by consistent mediocrity.
This continued into two qualifiers, where they drew first with an uninspired Uruguay side and then with a toothless Lithuania outfit in a match so low key that the players themselves described it as similar to a training game.
But then, out of the blue, something clicked. A 3-0 victory over Italy was followed by a 4-1 demolition of the Czech Republic. The stilted, uninspired side of the qualifiers was suddenly displaying scything counter attacking football and, for the first time in his Russia tenure, the mutterings of disaffection with coach Dick Advocaat had more or less become silent in Russia’s national press.
Suddenly, all onlookers expected Russia to tear through the rest of the group with ease and ask serious questions of those they would meet later on.
But these flashes of magical play from the likes of Andrei Arshavin, Roman Shirokov and Alan Dzagoev only served to paper over the cracks of the problems that had troubled analysts before the championships. These were the seeming lack of a tactical plan B, the absence of an out-and-out leader in the team and questions over the players’ fitness after a gruelling 18 month season that had seen many of the team play over 60 games.
All these issues began to creep slowly back in the draw against Poland. Russia looked strong for the first half but were thwarted by a Jakub Blaszczykowski wonder goal in the 57th minute.
After that the players began to tire noticeably and their ageing bodies did not seem to have any new ideas to turn to, as they ended up stumbling to a 1-1 draw in a game that will be remembered not for the events on the pitch but, sadly, for the fan violence off it.
Despite this result, no-one expected Russia to not progress from the group stages; they needed only a draw to do so and we were all assured by the players and coaches that fitness was not a problem.
But a problem it seemed to be, as the players looked sluggish from the opening whistle, They were given a number of chances by defensive errors from the Greeks but failed to capitalise on them and once their opponents began to snuff out Russia’s counter attacking threat by sitting very deep in large defensive numbers, the sbornaya looked lost for further ideas.
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