Russia’s national football team are on the verge of history. Or, rather, they stand on its cliff-edge.
Since the beginning of this century, when the Confederations Cup assumed its role as dress rehearsal for World Cup tournaments a year ahead, the event’s semi-final has always had a place for the hosts. Even a frail South Africa made it that far. Japan even made the final.
But Russia on Saturday face a stiff task to maintain that tradition.
They take on Mexico in Kazan knowing that only a win will put them into the top half of a Group A topped by Mexico, who need only a draw to guarantee progress, with Portugal, who defeated the hosts 1-0 on Wednesday, in second place.
Both are a point ahead of the Russians, who have offered only spurts of evidence so far in the tournament that their Fifa world ranking of 63 is a mean assessment of their standing in the world game.
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There are a little more than 50 weeks to go until Russia, the eyes of the world on them, begin the 2018 World Cup at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow.
If certain practical, organisational aspects of the country’s preparation have been shown in a favourable light over the first week of this Confederations Cup, the potential of the national team to carry the public’s patriotic enthusiasm a long distance into a major tournament is under scrutiny and in some doubt.
A young Russia team might have lost far more heavily to Portugal than by the single early Cristiano Ronaldo goal that put them in difficulty. The fact that they managed a 2-0 win over New Zealand, the champions of Oceania in the first group game, is small solace.
There is little time, or appetite, to go back to the drawing board, either, in the search for a combination of players who might have a nation of close to 150 million people punch closer to their weight in the world’s most watched sports event next summer.
Since Russia won the right to host the event — and, just as significantly, since an exciting Russia side reached the semi-finals of the European Championships in 2008 — theirs has been a story of setbacks, rethinks, and false starts.
Stanislav Cherchesov, the manager charged with overcoming Mexico, is the fourth different one since Guus Hiddink, architect of the Euro 2008 success, stood down having failed to guide Russia to the 2010 World Cup finals.
After Hiddink, Russia continued with a policy of trust in experienced foreign managers, but Dick Advocaat and then the highly-paid Fabio Capello failed to get beyond the first round of their tournaments, Euro 2012 and the 2014 World Cup, respectively.
When Russia then flopped out of Euro 2016 at the group stage, Leonid Slutsky, appointed a year earlier, left the post, and the Russian Federation looked back with alarm at a record at successive tournament finals that read: Three group-phase exits, nine matches and just one win.
Cherchesov has been radical in some respects. Just nine of the players Slutsky took to France a year ago, for a tournament disfigured by the street violence of some Russian followers, were retained by the new manager for this competition.
The former national team goalkeeper, who has played and managed in various countries beyond his native Russia, has made the last four of the 2018 his target.
“A semi-final has a nice ring to it,” he declared.
The sound of reaching a semi-final by the end of Saturday would be soothing, certainly, and Cherchesov will be encouraged by the fault-lines Mexico have shown in defence so far. They conceded twice against Portugal, and trailed New Zealand for a period in their ill-tempered 2-1 win over the Kiwis, although senior players had been rested for that game.
Cherchesov says what he wants most of all from the Confederations Cup is to see a “competitive and sturdy team developing.”
He would like at least two more matches to watch that development, and to see further encouraging signs of international pedigree shown by, say, the Krosnador striker, Fyodor Smolov, the leading scorer in both the last two seasons in the Russian Premier League, the league from which all the squad are drawn.
“The game against Mexico feels like a final,” Cherchesov said. “But it will feel like that for both teams.”
Yet the pressure to take the initiative is far heavier on the hosts.
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