Putin's plan – victory for Croatia!

This is one of the funniest jokes of the week, in my opinion. And late at night on Wednesday the share of the joke in it increased to 100%. Everything turned out exactly like at home: where Putin is, there is victory, “Vladimir Vladimirovich, you are lucky.”

I know that dear readers of “Hedgehog” react rather nervously to my notes on a sports topic, believing that they have no place in a political magazine. But, firstly, our magazine is not political, but rather socio-political. We are interested in everything that interests society. And football has been of great interest to society in the last month. If 700 thousand people want to go to Luzhniki for the match with England, and the game with Israel, according to official measurements, is watched by almost 50% of television viewers, it means that there is still something socially significant in this “primitive game of limited people.” And secondly, we will write about the elections, “United Russia”, the machinations of the authorities and other nauseating things and read them to our heart’s content. And now you can relax a little and even rejoice a little. A little. And with a socio-political slant.

My joy as a fan from the Russian national football team getting to the European Championship lasted about ten minutes. Then calm came. In preparation for the seemingly inevitable relegation of the national team, I jotted down some theses and now I understand that I don’t want to give them up, despite the incredible miracles that, it turns out, still happen in life. I don’t want to arrange here an analysis of purely football advantages and disadvantages - this is not our profile. But the events of recent days have highlighted the peculiarities of human characters perfectly.

I return to the match with Israel. In which we needed everything, and the opponent needed nothing. And this opponent was weaker than us. And the lineup was youthful and completely inexperienced. But, nevertheless, he won. Out of thousands of different reasons for this incident, I will single out one. I don’t know whether it’s the most important or not, but it’s definitely very important.

Those who follow football more or less closely will not let you lie: the Russian championship this year turned out to be very intense. Three more rounds before the end, the winners were not clear, and nothing was clear about those relegating from the Premier League - almost half of the teams were candidates for relegation. But in these last three rounds, only one match ended with an unexpected result - Spartak could not defeat Saturn. In all other games, the one who needed it most won, regardless of the rank and class of the teams. Or a draw was settled to mutual satisfaction.

And this is the picture we have from year to year. Never any surprises at crucial moments. Or almost none. It would be possible to make good capital from this, but the bookmakers, at the climax of the championship, when it seemed necessary to make money, either refused to accept bets at all, or set such meager odds that they did not risk anything.

And before the game with Israel, the players of our team found themselves in a very familiar situation. They are accustomed to the fact that if the opponent does not need anything, but they, on the contrary, need victory, then this victory will not escape them! I’m not saying that in our championship in such cases the match is necessarily bought. Not always. It’s just that our people don’t have the habit of fighting when you don’t need anything. That's if it's for money!

This is called "stimulation". And there have been situations when the leader plays with a hopeless outsider, but the outsider was stimulated by the leader’s direct competitor. And the outsiders start racing like scalded people, so it’s unclear – where is the difference in class, why are some fighting for gold, while others have one foot in the first league?

I don’t know if anyone paid the Israelis anything because they played us so well, but there were so many rumors that they were paid to make Israel fool around. Why, Israel is almost the 16th republic! A quarter of our people! So won't they agree? And I have almost no doubt that our guys believed it. That everything has already been decided by someone somewhere, that now they will come out, and the opponent will start firing at their goal. Pardon the pathos: just as we are used to the fact that everything here can be bought or sold, we have approached others with the same standard. And they never left until the end. However, as it turned out, even after the match there were those who sincerely believed that Israel helped us, gave in - something just didn’t work out by chance.

Abramovich, who was featured incessantly during the broadcast, became a household name. Who stole everything in the country? Abramovich! Who bought the yachts, Chelsea (plural), castles, etc.? Abramovich. So Abramovich should have bought football.

It turns out that this story is not entirely about football. It is about the fact that everything is bought and sold - and this is the only way we are ready to solve some of our problems. The fact that no one believes in the honesty of anything from the very beginning and going the honest way is pointless. It’s also about the fact that it’s “free” and impossible to lift a finger. What first Israel and then Croatia did is unthinkable for us, does not fit into any framework, this does not happen with us at all! Since you don’t need it, since you don’t get paid for it, then why bother?

And this is another problem, by the way, with our football. The guys get fantastic money by any standards - not only in comparison with our pensioners and state employees. They are popular, they are footballers who are paid a lot everywhere, the age of sports is short. But they still get much more than they are objectively worth. And what is the incentive to develop in this case? Previously, people were eager to go abroad, but now you can’t kick anyone out of Russia. It's harder to play there and they pay less. So they stew in their own juice, being in complete complacency.

Their last match against Andorra was one of the most embarrassing victories we have ever seen. They played so hard against a dwarf microscopic opponent that they could barely carry their legs. Because they didn’t believe that the Croats were capable of miracles, and, therefore, “there’s no need for us to have a festival.” A professional must always remain a professional. At least not allowing yourself to embarrass yourself in front of people!

We are fantastically lucky! There has simply never been such luck in history. Apparently, Hiddink is truly colossal, the world's main lucky guy. But luck comes to an end sooner or later. As does money, by the way. What remains? Name and reputation. I congratulate our team on reaching the European Championship, but I ask: guys, don’t embarrass yourself like this anymore, at least respect yourself. And try to believe not only in miracles, but also in the fact that not everything in this world has yet been sold, because not everything in it is measured in dollars and euros.