Translated material
Not a win, not a loss
Frankly speaking, only an accidental home victory over England opened a clear path for our team to the final part of Euro 2008. And it was closed in many ways by an equally accidental defeat in Israel. But the overall result of the campaign, in which there were many happy and sad accidents for us, undoubtedly turned out to be logical. Even despite the mathematical chances that we still have (theoretically, Croatia is capable of beating England at Wembley, and ours will certainly cope with Andorra). It's just that Russia is objectively weaker than England and Croatia - two teams that, apparently, will represent our group at the European Championships in Austria and Switzerland.
Let's remember how much benefit there was from the Russian team's dramatic adventures getting into the final part of the 2004 European Championship in Portugal. Not playing in the strongest group, our team, with a most painful leap at the end of the qualifying campaign, only achieved participation in the play-offs. The head coach at that time was Georgy Yartsev - a man, with all due respect to him, who was not capable of coaching the national team at a decent level. The play-offs against the Welsh national team, which was much weaker than Russia, were remembered for our helplessness in attack, the only difficult goal by Vadim Evseev and his famous phrase in colloquial Russian (aka obscenities), thrown directly into the television camera by the fans and football players of the Welsh team who did not understand this language. In Portugal itself, our team looked like an annoying misunderstanding, experiencing hysterical fright in the first match against the Spaniards, losing outright to the hosts, with a scandal expelling one of the then leaders Alexander Mostovoy directly from the championship and winning in the now meaningless third match of the future “free” European champion - - Greece.
Then the era of Vyacheslav Koloskov ended, who ruled first Soviet and then Russian football for almost 30 years and seemed irreplaceable in principle. Now Russian football has different leaders, for the first time in history our national team is coached by a foreign specialist - and, no matter what some offended Russian “coaches” say, he is superior in level to them. Guus Hiddink is trying to create a national team in Russia that could be firmly present at least in the second tier of the leading teams in world football. Simply put, so that her getting to the final tournaments of the European and World Championships should not be a happy accident or a sensation, as it is now, but a pattern. We have a new team that is just learning to play modern football. We objectively do not have very good players, and, for example, the defenders are simply weak.
Hiddink is not a magician, but it is fundamentally important for him to be given the opportunity to create from the national team a mechanism (or organism) independent of the person of the head coach or the head of the Russian Football Union, to lay down the traditions of a professional attitude of all services to the organization of work with the main team of the country. Therefore, it is very correct that his contract was extended until 2010, and it is very important that he is given the opportunity to go through the full cycle with this new team, which includes selection for the world championship.
We must understand that the Russian team did not fail in Israel and that it did not fail this entire qualifying campaign. Failure to qualify for Euro 2008 for England would be a monstrous failure, for Croatia - almost a sensation, for Russia - almost a pattern. In matches with our main competitors in the group, we have never been stronger than our opponents in terms of quality of play. We should objectively consider both goalless draws with the Croats a blessing: our opponents both in Moscow and Zagreb looked much better. The 0:3 defeat to England at Wembley reflects the real balance of power between our teams much more accurately than Russia's 2:1 victory on the Luzhniki artificial turf. This second match was rather a draw in terms of the level of play of the teams.
Of course, it would be nice to get to Euro 2008. But it is much more pleasant and, most importantly, much more important, much more correct to create a team that will be able, based on the level of play, to make it to all the main tournaments from any qualifying group. Today's Russian team is not such a team. Therefore, let’s not blame the players too much for the unfortunate and accidental defeat by Israel. How they should not have been praised too much for their no less accidental victory over England.