The Russian national football team tied with the Egyptian Olympic team

The Russian football team returned to the field six months after its last friendly matches – in March with the Iranians and Iraqis – a meeting in Suez with the Egyptian Olympic team. The game, for which Russian coach Valery Karpin fielded a very unusual lineup, ended in a draw – 1:1.

The Suez match was the fifth for the Russian national team since in the spring of 2022 it found itself outside of big football life due to sanctions. And, probably, the strangest of all the roles she played during this period. An exceptionally intimate atmosphere in a small stadium. The heat is below 40: in this weather in Egypt it is better, of course, not to play football, but to lie on the beach, preferably making a minimum of movements.

The opponent seems to be a fairly serious football brand, but he is not so closely connected with the team in which, for example, Liverpool scorer Mohamed Salah plays.

Not the national, but the Olympic team of Egypt, that is, in fact, a little older than the classical youth team. And it is made up of players, the lion’s share of whom even advanced football sites know virtually nothing about: they play in the local championship, and nothing is known about attention from the Big Five clubs.

The Russian team itself, which had the chance to play with these Egyptians, was also strange. Her coach Valery Karpin, strictly speaking, conducted dashing personnel experiments in each of the fresh friendly matches during isolation. But here they reached some incredible scale. Maybe for the first time in history at the heart of the main Russian team it didn’t turn out not a single one, precisely not a single football player, who, let’s say, even a year ago looked like she needed a bloody nose. Well, was it really possible to imagine just recently that Stanislav Akgatsev, Viktor Alexandrov, Danila Prokhin, Dmitry Vasiliev, Tamerlan Musaev, Daniil Kuznetsov would simultaneously be on the field at the core of the Russian national team? This was also a kind of youth program – for the future, and, obviously, not the immediate one, which in today’s situation, by the way, may be logical.

An unusual Russian variation was played, studying which, most of those who were worried about it probably went on the Internet to check which club the guys included in it were playing for, as it should be – with a desire not subject to any heat, but without much polish. Gloss is the fruit of class, experience, teamwork. But here, for it to arise, there were too few ingredients.

So for a long time I had to watch mainly the torment of the Russian team in search of reliable ways to drag the ball from their own half to someone else’s, and then, there, to someone else’s, to properly dispose of it. They were rarely found.

Except that at the end of the first half, the guests made a couple of good attacks, which ripened mainly from long throws forward.

Their opponents, however, were also not noted for anything outstanding. And over the course of a whole period, they had, in fact, one and only decent attack. This was the first normal Egyptian attack in the match, and it became effective. Then the Russian defense played very carefully, but in that episode they obviously faked it, first missing a penetrating pass into the penalty area, and after it a cross into the center. Bilal Mazhar shot from the goal line, and this, of course, was the case when, even if instead of Akgatsev the goalkeeper had been a much more seasoned character, the shot would still have reached the goal.

Valery Karpin already changed five players during the break and undoubtedly praised himself for his foresight. The Russian team perked up and restored its balance immediately after the rest, although success was a consequence not so much of its vigor as of Egyptian carelessness. The hosts’ goalkeeper Mohammed El-Sayed was frightened by the nimble Nikita Saltykov and gave him the ball right in front of the goal. Saltykov himself was unable to hit it into the net, but the equally swift Stepan Oganesyan arrived to help.

After this, Suez football, which until now had not been distinguished by its liveliness, began to sparkle with new, much more pleasant colors than before. Naturally, the Egyptians were primarily drawn to the front line, and a couple of times they caused some problems for Akgatsev. The goalkeeper coped with everyone, once taking a terribly difficult shot. But the Russian team did not throw the idea of ​​properly annoying the enemy into the trash. Moreover, the sharpness in her play, along with the tempo, has clearly increased. There was an episode in which the Egyptians were saved from disaster only by some fantastic luck. Due to an error by their goalkeeper, the corner kick reached Daniil Khlusevich, who was on duty at the far post. But it was she, the stand, who took upon himself two of his blows in a row, and Viktor Melekhin, who picked up the rebound, no longer shot point-blank, but from a medium distance, missed.

This, of course, is not exactly great valor, but it is a fact that the Russian team looked better than its rivals for about half an hour. Until the ending, which suddenly turned into a severe test for her.

In these last minutes, the Egyptians attacked so desperately and recklessly, as if some valuable prize of a top tournament was at stake in the match. They came close to scoring. They could have scored it when Mohammed Hamdi took a clever free-kick. But the ball he sent low hit the post. They could have scored it when, just seconds before the final whistle, they crowded the Russian goal so tightly that it seemed that the guests would never be able to resist. They survived thanks to Stanislav Akgatsev, who deflected the ball sent into the corner from half a dozen meters away.

In the coming days, the Russian team will have two more friendly matches. On Monday she will play with the same Olympic team of Egypt, and on Tuesday – with the Qatar team, no longer an Olympic team, but just a national team.

Alexey Dospekhov