The Russian national team did not score in a friendly way – Sport – Kommersant

The Russian national team, suspended for an indefinite period from all international football tournaments, held the second friendly match in recent times. She met in Dushanbe with the team of Tajikistan and played with a noticeably inferior opponent in a 0-0 draw.

After a difficult match in Bishkek with the national team of Kyrgyzstan, in which Russian football players won strong-willed victory 2:1, they continued their original tour of Central Asia and visited Dushanbe. Here they were opposed by the national team of Tajikistan, about which, probably, even the coaching staff of Valery Karpin had a minimum of information. Meanwhile, Tajik football has rather deep roots, at one time it gave the Soviet Union, and then Russia, for example, such masters as Valery Tursunov, Edgar Hess, Rashid Rakhimov, Mukhsin Mukhamadiev. The same Dushanbe Pamir, with which the master of the domestic coaching workshop Yuri Semin worked in the 1980s, played in the top league of the USSR championship.

Now in Tajikistan there are no strong clubs and players, but in the FIFA rankings, the national team, which occupies 108th place, surpasses many post-Soviet countries – Estonia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Latvia and Lithuania.

In the Asian Football Confederation, the level of competition is much lower than in Europe, but the fact that the national team of Tajikistan for the first time qualified for the main regional forum – the Asian Cup, which will be held next year, still speaks of its rather serious combat capability.

Since this year, the Tajik team has been led by a Croatian specialist with a German coaching school, Petar Shegrt. Before moving to Dushanbe, he practiced in Germany, Austria, Georgia, Indonesia, led the exotic football teams of Afghanistan and the Maldives. And at the pre-match press conference, Shegrt a little boldly reminded Karpin of the defeat in the key qualifying match for the 2022 World Cup from Croatia. They say that this is not the first time to lose to the Croats, and he and his team really want to defeat the Russian team.

Despite the loss of goalkeeper Matvey Safonov, defenders Georgy Jikia and Vyacheslav Karavaev, the Russian squad was several times higher than the Tajik one in terms of total transfer value. However, Karpin was still somewhat surprised by the choice of “start”, and in particular by the fact that young Sergey Pinyaev from Wings of the Soviets and another debutant, Lechi Sadulaev from Akhmat, got into it. The most experienced “collector” in this version turned out to be Anton Miranchuk with his 19 matches, and the captain’s armband was given to Danil Glebov, who had previously entered the field only three times in the T-shirt of the country’s main team.

The arrival of Russians in Dushanbe, as expected, caused a stir, and there were practically no empty seats at the Central Republican Stadium, which seats 20 thousand spectators, and there was a real crush on the approaches to it.

True, it was not so much the crowded stands as the artificial field that seemed to be the main ally of the Tajik team. Even Vladimir Sychevoi, whose Orenburg plays home matches on synthetics, noted that the turf at the Dushanbe arena is far from the most modern and not of the best quality.

However, from the first minutes the game moved to half of the hosts, and Sadulaev could well open an account. Goalkeeper Rustam Yatimov was often, as they say, in the frame. His Russian colleague Alexander Selikhov, as a rule, watched what was happening from the side, and the only shot of the Tajiks on target in the first half was repelled by Glebov instead. Before the break, the visitors didn’t score a goal either, having faced an organized, disciplined and motivated team. Gradually, their visual advantage completely disappeared, and equality was established on the field. Either the Russians did not adapt to the specific surface, or they put up a lineup that was too experimental and unplayed, but most likely, both had an effect.

In the second half, Karpin decided to strengthen the game with substitutions, releasing Arsen Zakharyan and the hot Sychevoi, who recently scored a hat-trick in the Russian Championship and became the leader of the race of top scorers. In addition, Sergei Pesyakov got into the goal, but he immediately injured himself, twisting his leg, and had to resort to the services of a nominally third goalkeeper, Anton Shunin. As soon as the match resumed after a medical time-out, Zakharyan almost scored, whose breakthrough was stopped by Yatimov. And then the guests almost pushed the ball into the net after a corner. However, in general, the Tajiks were still on an equal footing and periodically bothered Shunin with long-range strikes.

The game rolled to a goalless draw, but Karpin was in no hurry with additional permutations, as if he was satisfied with such a result. Only literally Andrey Mostovoy and Daniil Fomin entered the final ten minutes. In the 85th minute, the Russians still scored from a corner, when Yatimov made the brightest save of the match, and Daniil Utkin fussed over the rebound. However, the referee saw a violation of the rules by Maxim Osipenko in a standard combat with mutual grips and annulled the goal. As a result, this friendly match ended quite friendly – 0:0. Now the Russian team will go to Tashkent, where on Sunday they will measure their strength with the team of Uzbekistan.

Alexander Ilyin