So, the Russian team has become an adult. Now she is no longer a bride, but a legitimate team of Guus Hiddink, the famous football “progressor” of our era. We entered a new life in a friendly match against Latvia - a team of very limited abilities, but strong and militant. It was hard to expect wild public excitement - you cannot collect a complete stadium in Brazil, but about twenty thousand inquisitive fans visited the Lokomotiv stadium on Wednesday evening. Still interesting: Russia - and with a foreign coach. Attraction of unheard of courage.
Our football did not want to let a foreign coach to his holy of holies (albeit dilapidated) for a long time. For example, Valery Gazzayev, the mouthpiece of the domestic coaching school and its most successful representative now, noisily objected to the Varangian, pushing for a special Russian path, mental differences, national pride ... However, another failure in the qualifying round of the World Cup accelerated a radical decision.
Hiddink's attitude towards the selection of the composition is so far detached. Yes, the Dutchman visited with a dozen matches of the national championship, but so far only as an observer with great powers, which he will not fail to apply. Operational decisions are the prerogative of his assistants: Alexander Borodyuk, who has been “acting”, and Igor Korneev, who recently joined him — people with rich experience in performing and generally living abroad. They look not just as pissed off free coaches, but as the very experts who are able to preserve our “own pride” and help the Dutch to figure out the situation as quickly as possible and establish contact with players, officials and the public. And they are trying very hard. So for now, the squad is not quite a Hiddink list, but rather a list of Borodyuk - Attorney. It is possible that Dick Advocaat, another Dutch coach who headed the St. Petersburg Zenit a little earlier, lobbied his Zenit players slightly.
Of course, it is rather difficult to draw conclusions about the roster and how Hiddink managed to discern the pros and cons of our leading players in the match with Latvia. Rather, I did not see it yet, because there were a lot of controversial positions. For example, the appearance from the first minutes of Marat Izmailov, which you will not particularly see in the games of his club, the metropolitan Lokomotiv. Or the St. Petersburg pair of forwards Arshavin - Kerzhakov, the choice of which can only be explained by the desire to observe the club-link principle, popular among coaches of different teams.
The only bright and independent decision of Hiddink so far is the choice of the captain of the national team. Few expected that the bandage would be handed to Yevgeny Aldonin from CSKA - a very nice person, but quiet and even shy. Obviously, the big-eyed Hiddink considered something like this in Aldonin. And indeed, in the match against the Latvians, the new captain was the best on the field: he managed to insure partners, and noted in creation - he gave some wonderful programs. After one of them, the Russian team got one of two chances to open an account in the first half: the right edge Alexander Anyukov burst into the penalty area, shot, after which the goalkeeper hit the ball directly into Arshavin's head. Goal? No, the barbell. More precisely, the crossbar. Another moment arose after the next dashing passage Anyukov (by the way, who also played at a very decent level). Lumbago was supposed to close Bilyaletdinov. Locked, but did not hit the gate.
This is not to say that the Russian team played poorly, but the overall impression was a bit dry. In the second half, we even had to entertain the audience with comic episodes like the heroic crawling of the Berezutsky brothers on the line of our goal in an attempt to scratch the ball from the ribbon after leaving one-on-one with the Latvian forward Akinfeev.
Numerous replacements usual for friendly matches seemed to upset the already not-so-good organization of the Russian team. For some time, Hiddink was fastening, maintaining the order, but then he waved his hand and began to shuffle the deck.
Pogrebnyak and Pavlyuchenko, a couple of big strikers, appeared on the field at the same time. But it turned out pretty well. It was not possible to pass Latvia through the pass, and the powerful martial arts were easily won by the powerful Stepanov, in whose work book there is a mention of work in the London Arsenal. However, it turned out, as in the fairy tale about turnip, and Hiddink even found a saving mouse - “Tom” forward Pavel Pogrebnyak, who scored six goals in the last three matches of the championship and opened the Latvian goal in the 93rd minute, was not enchanting, of course, but not empty games.
Comrades who hoped for a miracle abroad, will certainly not be disappointed. Soilmen, on the contrary, will rub sweating hands. However, they will say that we saw something so special? ..
But realists, as usual, will be right. A normal friendly match came out, no better and no worse than the rest. No one was expecting a super result right away. And on September 6, when Russia starts the Euro-08 qualifying round with a match with a very strong Croatia, it's too early to wait. This is a long business. Since we decided ...
A goal in stoppage time is a good reason to believe in Hiddink’s luck. But the main thing in the Dutchman, of course, is not this. He really is a "progressor." Or, if you are a little scared by this term, just as he was scared by the inventors of the Strugatsky writers, we find a different analogy. Is it worth it to shy away from a foreign trainer if, in fact, it’s just a good programmer whom we called to debug the operating system? .. In the end, with our brains we have been flowing to the West for how many years - so now let foreign debts return.
Kirill DEMENTYEV, Alexander SHMURNOV