Skopje is such a city where a plane from Zurich can easily not fly out. Because the flight was canceled due to the fact that too few tickets were sold for it. And, driving along the central streets of the capital of Macedonia, this is not surprising. It's strange that someone flies here at all. The garbage here does not seem to be removed. And the main thoroughfare of the city not only has a dull look, but also bothers with smells.
However, the famous Spartak veteran Viktor Onopko, with whom he had to fly from Milan, did not feel all these charms. The fact is that he did not apply for a visa to Macedonia, but still took advantage of the proposal of the RFU to visit the game.
At the border post, of course, they slowed down.
“What kind of passport are you giving me?” - the border guard was surprised.
“Russian,” Victor whispered no less surprised.
- Where is the visa?
- Visa? I live in Spain.
“But the Russian passport?”
- Yes.
- We have a visa country.
Onopko could not find what to answer (or did not know what a visa country is) and dutifully went for the border guards. I had to tell the representatives of the RFU about this, and they went to help the player out. But I didn’t see him again. They say they sent back to Spain.
By the way, Onopko is likely to receive an offer from Vitaliy Mutko. Perhaps he will take under his command one of the youth teams. And in general, Victor wants to enter the Moscow Higher School of Trainers, since he does not succeed in doing this in Spain.
The Gradsky stadium in Skopje does not resemble the European arena. A construction site is visible from the field, which they cannot finish, it seems, since the time of Tito. The meadow is much worse than in Sochi, where the national team trained. It is uneven. And most importantly, very tough. This was told by one of the players, and from these words it became really scary. We no longer remember which glade our players need: hard or soft.
At the last moment, the hosts outplayed the schedule and decided to practice at 15 hours, and not at 17, as previously planned. At a later time, the Russian team was allowed into the stadium. Guus Hiddink decided there was nothing to hide. So journalists could analyze the actions of his players for an hour.
The Dutch specialist refused a two-way game. Most of the training team worked out holding the ball. And goalkeepers were again engaged in what. Igor Akinfeev, for example, rehearsed free kicks. And they turned out much better with him than later with field players.
Mazal Pogrebnyak, smeared Pavlyuchenko. Sychev fell into the "frame", but Akinfeev, Borodin and Malafeev (and in turn) coped with this. Well beat Semshov. But, according to our data, he will not enter the field on Wednesday. With high probability, it can be argued that none of the young players will take part in the game. And only Roman Shishkin gets into the application for the match as a spare.
We also note that the Russian team, staying on Monday at the Holiday Inn, did not move anywhere in the morning. There is no particular choice in Skopje. Yes, and they slept well. None of the leaders of the bed seemed hard.
The only thing that upset the Russian delegation was the lack of organization of the Macedonians. For example, they did not provide the balls to our players on time. True, Hiddink at this time focused on the warm-up, and the team administrators quickly stirred up the local idiots. But the sediment still remained.
Alexey SHEVCHENKO, Skopje