Russia Worried As Team Fail To Win In Eight Months As World Cup Draws Closer

Russia 2018 World Cup

Russia Has Not Won Any Game In Eight Months

Russia, who is hosting the 2018 FIFA World cup is currently worried as the country’s national football team on Tuesday, extended their winless streak to seven matches after been held to a draw by Turkey.

The host country has not recorded any win in eight months. Stanislav Cherchesov’s side have five wins, six draws and nine defeats since the former Russian international goalkeeper took over in August 2016.

“Everything’s bad,” declared the Wednesday front page of Sport Express daily, which said the national side’s play had dampened the mood of fans in the country.

“With such a performance from our national team our chances look pretty low,” school teacher Daniil Pospelov, who watched the Turkey match from a Moscow pub, told Nigeria News.

“We need to learn how to attack constructively to get a result regardless of whether the opponents’ team make mistakes or not.”

However Vitaly Mutko, who was once the head of Russian football but temporarily stepped down after he was linked to state-sponsored doping programmes, was not disturbed by the result.

“It’s not a problem that the squad haven’t won a single match within a year,” Sport Express quoted Mutko as saying.

“Don’t forget who have the opponents have been, Argentina, Spain, Brazil, France.

Cherchesov, who on Tuesday became the country’s first manager to fail to win in seven consecutive games, also found some positives in his team’s performance compared to their previous friendly last week.

“I think we’ve made a qualitative leap ahead by comparison to the match with Austria,” he said.

“I don’t grieve for Cherchesov and his plans,” former Manchester United star and Russian international Andrei Kanchelskis told Sport Express. “For me his ideas are ridiculous and unreal. I’m worried about our footballers.

“I just cannot grieve for the ridiculous coaching team that destroys our football.”

Russia kick off their World Cup against Saudi Arabia in Group A at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow on June 14 and also face Egypt in St Petersburg on June 19 and Uruguay in Volgograd on June 25.