ruidmitrix by dimarik

Having failed to get my hands on tickets to the Luzhniki this Octover 17, I have to say, its a big miss on a historic matchday. But, pain endurance is no more, pembaca tercinta. My sporting self image restored to previous mountain top levels.

Yeah! It's Russia 2, England 1
It's not every year that you see Russia takes third place in their qualifiers group, play at home against a serious team in second position, trailing them five points with a game in hand in order to qualify. It's not for nothing that Channel One's newscasters dubbed the October 17 encounter a Win of the Decade. A decade full of tears for any Russian fan, no doubt.

But thanks to the entire team, one Roman Pavlyuchenko (which you romantics might want to relate to Roman Riquelme for no particular reason but to mention them in the same breath), and most importantly Guus Hiddink, finally the day had come for Russian fans to forget about those old, masochistic days of having to support and love a team that likes to get defeated just so to plunge into a blame game, like the 7-0 (or was it 7-1?) defeat at Portugal three years ago. Have we come a long way...

So what really happened?
First, good old Guus Hiddink came around, with little help from Russia’s billionaires. Guus has logic of his own. He cares not how badly his team concedes, and how it concedes in the same carbon-copied way (Russians don’t have adequate defenders, and at that, they’re really bad in the air). As long as Guus’s team scores the goals they really know how to.

With two of his right sided wingers injured, at 0-1 down after the interval Guus then opted to deploy four men on the flanks (while leaving two defenders sit at the back). At one point, with three left sided natural wingers on the field, even at fullback position, namely Zhirkov, Bilyaletdinov and Torbinskiy, to give the game that necessary speed, giving trademark Hiddinkesque pace to ensure a dramatic ending. Remember Korea 2002 and Australia 2006?

You can’t complain about lack of determination. Both teams showed that throughout the game. You can’t say they lack mental toughness either. To play in plastic pitch is already a mentally screwing condition, since players become prone to basic technical mistakes. In fact, this only became advantageous for the home side after Roman Pavlyuchenko and Dmitriy Torbinskiy came on, the only two players who are used to this kind of pitch.

Tactically, it’s been a traditional battle between the passing game and direct football. England took advantage of their height, while Russia took advantage of their small bodies to win free kicks, and squeeze the ball through neat passing. It was a good day to be proud of Russian football, once again. Not since Soviet Union in 1986 and 1988…

Ruidmitrix' man of the match: in equal bidding, Aleksandr Anyukov and Yuri Zhirkov.