- Before the matches of the qualifying group, your team held a friendly match with Fulham. Did Deathin play against you?
- No, the British put up the youth team, there was not a single player from the base there, including Smertin. But Lesha came to us in the locker room after the game and wished good luck in the qualifying games. On this our communication with him ended. They talked for a long time in the hallway with our coach Ravil Sabitov.
- Did you manage to watch the CSKA vs. Spartak Saturday match?
- I watched the game through an online broadcast on the Internet. We sat in the hotel room with Sasha Salugin, Pasha Mamaev and Andrey Ivanov, pulled out a laptop from each other in order to properly cheer on their favorite team. Salugin and I argued before the derby. He was sure that CSKA would tear Spartak, of course, I had the opposite opinion. We made a bet in which the loser will have to tumble through the entire training field. The result was a draw, after which, as you know, no one tumbled.
- Did you watch Eurovision, which was shown on the evening of the same day?
- No, but how did we perform?
- They took the third place.
- Well done.
- What is the youth team of England, which you beat in the first match?
- They all play in the youth teams of the leading Premier League clubs: in Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool. They play such a beast in the middle of the field - a black midfielder, just spilled Patrick Vieira! In the match with us, the whole game went through him, but we managed to neutralize him. On Thursday evening, we went to the game Holland - England, so there the Dutch broke this Vieira, and therefore beat the English.
- And in our country, Mamaev and Nikita Andreev will not play against Holland because of busting yellow cards. Nikita, however, is a substitute, but Mamaev is a key player. Is his absence a tragedy for the national team?
- This is a serious loss, especially since only one person can play in his position - Zhenya Balyaykin from Rubin. Mamaev played an opornik in a match with the British, and an attacking midfielder with the Czechs. Most likely we will play with the Dutch, as well as with the British, without a pronounced attacking midfielder and, since Mamaev will not, it is Balyaykin who claims this role.
- How do you relax after matches and training? Maybe you were given a tour of English cities?
- Even before the match, we took off the whole team and took a bus to London to watch the Chelsea-Manchester match at Stamford Bridge. That's the whole rest.
- Have you already studied the Dutch team? What kind of team is this?
- The base club of this team is the youth team of Ajax. Such, you know, is the classic Dutch youth team, a lot of short, strong Surinamese and tall white with blond hair. We will try to play with them at least for a draw, because even in this case we keep the first place and get into the final part of the European Championship.
Vadim SINAEV