Russia qualifying campaign was far than exciting and the stats show exactly that. Only three matches passed the Over 2.50 goal line with one of those being a predictable humiliation against Andorra in Moscow. Russia seem to be unable to break down well organised defences and this was evident in their qualifying campaign: they only managed to beat Slovakia 1-0 at home, they failed to score against Armenia and scored just 2 in Andorra and 1 in Macedonia.
Their total number of goals in the whole campaign was just 17 which is a worrying sign coming into the Euro 2012. The most important thing for them was to reach this stage and now everything would be a plus. Dick Advocaat is a good manager who is going to leave Russia at the end of the tournament to go back home to PSV Eindhoven. He is highly experienced and his record at the big tournaments isn’t bad: with Netherlands he was able to get to the quarter finals of the 1994 World Cup and than went to the semis at Euro 2004 in his second spell with the Dutch national team. His only major disappointment was with South Korea as he couldn’t get them out of the group stage in the 2006 World Cup. With Russia he has done quite well so far as he is unbeaten in his last 11 games however against top teams at the Euros he may potentially struggle as he has some tired looking and uninspiring set of players. He may be able to do like Rehhagel has done with Greece but it doesn’t seem likely considering that bookmakers are pricing them to win at 32.00.
Finding a star in a team like this is not easy but Roman Pavlyuchenko and Alan Dzagoev surely deserve a mentioning. Even if Pavel Pogrebnyak hasn’t set the world on fire at Fulham he remains one of the best players of this Russian team having scored 6 times in 12 starts this season with the Cottagers. His international record tough it is not great and having scored just 8 goals in 31 matches and Russia cannot rely on him to solve their attacking problems. I think Russia are in a competitive group but they have the qualities to get through to the knock out stages. I don’t think tough that their tournament will last much longer tough as against top team they will struggle greatly due to their light attack.
Tags: Euro 2012, Russia Preview tips