Russia media say this is one of the weakest Russia teams in history
Not sure why. Dzyuba is decent and scores goals in the Europa league all the time. Golovin is good, cheryshev is good, mario Fernandes is good.... on paper they arent bad at all.
Cheryshev and Fernandes hardly played in the friendlies, partly because of injuries and also Cherchesov mostly using a 5-3-2 which he has changed from at the last minute. Cheryshev coming on for an injured Dzagoev was a big surprise, as it's usually been Aleksey Miranchuk competing for that role and it looked a simple straight swap between the two. Cheryshev has not been integrated into this team at all in the friendlies, even the ones immediately preceding the tournament. The manager Cherchesov either had a tactical masterstroke ready or he was winging it.
Before the Saudi game, i'd have put the team as slightly better than Euro 2016 squad, and not that much worse than Capello's team, it's a crap generation that has exposed all the flaws not fixed in the Russian football setup. The '90s and to a lesser extent 00s teams generally had much more talent to pick from and usually played far more attractive football than the post 2012 trash, but suffered in other areas like too many players lacking professionalism and interest in the national team(90s in general and the pre-94 world cup player revolt in particular) some really bad keepers(akinfeev has been easily the best because of his shot stopping, but even he has been error prone) dire managers and the inability to produce a clinical forward.
In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.