Andrey Shcherbakov: Not rolled

Andrey Shcherbakov Russian fans at the 2018 World Cup match - Croatia Photo: Twitter.com/fifaWorldcup_ru

On July 7, in Sochi, in the match of the quarterfinals of the World Cup, the Russian team played with the Croatian national team. This was the first match in the history of the Russian team in one fourth final of the championship.

The score was opened by the Russians closer to the end of the first half; In the last minutes of the half, the Croats equalized him. In the second half, there were no heads, in overtime, the Croatian team scored, then the Russian team. As a result, after the penalty shootout the Croats won.

Observer Andrei Shcherbakov analyzes the results of the match for Polit.ru.

“The World Cup for the Russian national team is over. And I would like to avoid the traditional analysis of the game, since everyone who saw the match made a certain impression about him. Someone played better, someone is worse, but there can be no reproaches to the national team of our country-the match has passed according to the most acceptable scenario for us.

We knew that we had problems ahead - these problems were designated. We knew that our defenders from time to time do what qualified attacking opponents for and punish. We saw this. We did not know that our team could fight like that - thank you very much for this. And the penalty is both skill and lottery. What happened.

Probably the most important conclusion that can be made from this World Cup is a conclusion both football and non -football. The football conclusion is that the national team, with all the praises that sang to her during the championship, will be eaten now (and she certainly deserved them), in general, did not answer the most important question. Namely: how does our football economy develop, in which direction will it develop?

In other words, the point that we have now reached, for domestic football there is a very high point. It’s wrong to say that, but in a sense, we took fifth place at the World Cup. Since of all the participants in the quarterfinals, we felt the smallest difference with the winners.

By the way, exactly the same story was in 1982, when the USSR team took second place in the semifinal group with the best indicator. If so, then we returned at the 1982 level. Which, in general, is a huge success. But this luck should not obscure from us that fact, speaking of the bureaucratic language that remains completely incomprehensible where we will move the next day, this fall, at the European Championship?

To maintain such the highest concentration as the one we have reached in the home championship, I do not think that it is possible. It is apparently impossible to say that we have some kind of supernatural young generation, inspired by something there. Because, probably, this is not so.

Moreover, probably, it’s just right to say that of the young players we can count in the near future, we can only call only Chalov and Tashaev. Moreover, that, it seems to me, both of them are thoroughly overestimated, and only the nearest European cup season will show what they really are.

In this regard, the point that was achieved may turn out to be a peak from which we (just as sharply as it rose), we can, sitting on the ass or some improvised means, quickly move down to the level that is traditionally considered us familiar. The depth of the organization, the depth of the game, the depth of the players, the Russian national football team, unfortunately, does not have it now, and we all know this.

We can say that today football, with all investments, all loud words and everything else, is not a national sport. It is not for them due to different circumstances. We can talk about this with a rather great confidence and probability, since we have an example of another sport that we can consider absolutely national. This, of course, is male volleyball.

Today, the male team of Russia in volleyball destroyed, otherwise not to say, the Brazilian team: 25:17, 25:18, 25:14. And the main thing is not what she destroyed. And the fact that the people who were on the site and destroyed the once the best team of the world were calmly replaced by other people leaving the bench, and these new people only strengthened the game.

Obviously, in football we saw something else. No, the situation with Dzagoev is understandable: he was injured and always considered as a player of the main composition. But neither Gazinsky, nor Erokhin, nor Smolov (the same Smolov to whom such advances were issued for the last two years) did not do the work that the players replaced by them did.

We love the phrase about the "holiday with tears in our eyes." Well, in a sense, we have it. I very much doubt that during my life we ​​will ever find ourselves in the same penalty series from the semifinals of the World Cup. But, in the end, as said in the British, if I am not mistaken, the film of the early 1960s, “This is a sports life”.

This was the first, purely football conclusion. There is a second conclusion, I would say-socio-political. And this conclusion is more important than everything that we can say about the sports component of the championship.

It consists of this. Everyone says that the championship is organized excellently, it really is: it is organized subtly, it is organized correctly, it is organized with the minimization of all possible negative connotations that very much interfered with both the phase of its preparation, and in the phase, and in the information space that existed around the championship.

The organizers - let's call them like that - they coped brilliantly. We can be executed from this pride in the quality of domestic management. And it can ask a fair question of this kind: guys, but what in this case it prevents you from doing everything at this or approximately at such a level? Cash question? No, hardly. The organization of the World Cup in the form in which we see it is the function of money only in the second, or even in the third stage. Wish? Maybe a desire. Interests? But, probably, it is interests!

Is there any feeling that some representatives of the authorities who are able to “resolve” the problems, as we saw on the example of the World Cup, solve the main of the problem that are not directly related to the quality of the government, municipal, local level? Perhaps this is so; Perhaps not - I do not presume to judge this. But the question arises. And, I'm afraid to arise, the more, the more. Moreover: I think that each of us probably approximately knows the answer to this question.

However, probably about this now, at the moment when we just lost very insulting in our main match of the last 50 years, it is not worth talking. It is worth saying that the summer of 2018 will recall us as the summer of miracles and joyful discoveries. It is worth saying that we loved our football team. That the World Cup, albeit without us, continues. And, probably, now, when each of us can root for whom he wants, we will root a little and for Croatia.

I do not think that the Croats have a volume of their form that we saw today have a chance against the British. But who knows? The ball, as we have told us many times, round. It turns out everything fairly: we gave Croatia “debt” for 2007, when she brought us to the European Championship. Now we willy-nilly brought it to the semifinals of the World Cup.

And if you follow the same logic (and if you remember, the Croats beat the British in 2007), then the British should beat the Croats and go to the final, where they will wait - who? I would very much like it to be the Belgian team. And I would very much like the Belgian team to become the world champion as a result. But I'm afraid it is as unrealizable as the new quarterfinals of the Russian national team in the next 20 years, ”said Andrei Shcherbakov.

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