The Russian team won a friendly match with Cuba with a score of 8:0. The match took place in Volgograd, and all the goals were scored by different players: the Russians shot at the opponent’s goal 32 times, 17 hit the target, and the Cubans only attempted to attack the opponent three times. The Russian team featured Ivan Oblyakov, Alexander Golovin, Anton Miranchuk, Alexander Silyanov, Alexander Sobolev, Danil Prutsev, Nikita Krivtsov and Andrey Mostovoy.
The media called Russia’s victory “devastating and the largest” since 2019: then the Russians set a record by beating San Marino with a score of 9:0 in the qualifying tournament for the European Championship. But obviously not everyone was happy about the victory.
More than 40 thousand fans attended the friendly match, and former RFU committee member Andrei Sozin believes that they were all deceived. A football expert does not understand why this tournament was organized at all and called the game a “crime against football”: “Did they really want to show in such a terrible way that the Russian team is alive? If we treat the national team and our fans, the state of our football this way, then we are simply traitors. You can’t do that”“, Sozin added.
Why Cuba, and what’s wrong with the boots?
Now it is objectively difficult for the Russian national team to find an opponent: it is a miracle that they managed to bring players from 169th place in the FIFA rankings. The team didn’t even have suitable boots — they had to quickly purchase them from Volgograd’s Sportmaster. The Cubans arrived with plastic spikes, but according to the regulations only iron ones were allowed.
After the game, the teams exchanged T‑shirts, albeit unilaterally: the Cuban players said that they only have one set of uniforms, which they look after themselves.
Sang in honor of Valery Karpin
During the press conference after the match, the head coach of the national team commented on the song that was performed in his honor: “I think it’s unnecessary to single out someone. Valera, Vasya, someone else. It is wrong to focus on this. It’s better to focus on the entire team.”. During the chants of “Valera, Valera,” Karpin turned around and left.
Earlier, Valery Karpin said that he was no longer considering players over 30 years old for the national team. Men Today, together with a sports journalist, figured out why such attitudes are connected.