Update Post: November 28, 2023 10:46 am
Lately everyone has become accustomed to the fact that Valery Karpin’s players play against opponents who are not of the highest level. Iraq, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kenya – all these teams cannot be considered great. And Cuba is one of the worst teams in the FIFA ranking (169th place). Any result other than a big victory could be considered a failure.
It’s not a joke: the Cubans had to buy boots for the match already in Volgograd. The fact is that the islanders flew to Russia taking sports shoes with plastic spikes, suitable for an artificial, not a natural, field. As a result, the team administrators went to one of the stores and bought new boots there.
And yet, despite the state of the opponent, the match caused great excitement among the fans. The residents of Volgograd missed the national team: the last time they visited this place was in 2002. It is not surprising that almost 40 thousand tickets for the match against Cuba were sold out in just a few days.
As the national team’s coach, Valery Karpin, promised, the team’s formation was very similar to that of the recent match against Cameroon (1-0) in Moscow. There are not many changes, more precisely two: the place of Dmitry Barinov and Sergei Pinyaev was taken by Anton Miranchuk and Alexander Golovin. By the way, Golovin will take the field with the captain’s armband.
The Russians’ full starting lineup was as follows: Matvey Safonov, Sergey Volkov, Maxim Osipenko, Alexander Soldatenkov, Alexander Silyanov, Daler Kuzyaev, Danil Glebov, Alexander Golovin, Anton Miranchuk, Ivan Oblyakov and Fedor Chalov.
At the beginning of the match, the Cubans were still showing resistance, although it was evident to everyone that the class difference between the teams was colossal. After wasting several good opportunities, the Russians recovered and began to score. Before the break Oblyakov, Golovin and Miranchuk scored. In the first 45 minutes, the visitors only had one shot at Safonov’s goal, who was frankly bored that night.
In the second half, the Cubans simply fell apart and ours did not even think about stopping. The Russians scored five more goals after the break. Silyanov, Alexander Sobolev, Danil Prutsev, Nikita Krivtsov and Andrey Mostovoy distinguished themselves. Substitute Sergei Pinyaev could have scored the ninth goal, but the Lokomotiv midfielder missed the penalty. The result was 8:0.