I don’t really care about the results of the Russian team now. That is not the objective of the parties
Maxim Pakhomov September 12, 2023, 22:30 Moscow time Audio version: Your browser does not support the audio element.
It’s impossible to go to a game with extreme motivation if you just go home afterwards.
“Should the Russian team play to win? Honestly, I don’t care at all.” These words were spoken by the leading Russian footballer of the 21st century, Andrei Arshavin, after the match against Qatar. And I want to subscribe to them 100%.
The situation with the national team’s matches is incredibly difficult. It seems that most critics of the team’s performance have begun to forget that almost none of the modern footballers found themselves in such circumstances. No European Cups. There are no world or European championships. Without major rivals. In general, in the RPL there are no matches that are worth anything other than prize money.
Everyone on the team constantly talks about motivation. Experienced players, from Barinov and Dzhikia, to the newly summoned ones. And everyone honestly says (I really believe it) that it exists, that such questions cannot even arise at national team matches. It’s like that. But it is still impossible to get out of your head that these games are worthless. No matter how much you want to play for the national team, there is a difference: you go out to get to the European Championship or to “prove that we exist.” In one case, you win and move on to the most important tournament. In the other, when you win too, you just go home.
Valery Karpin
head coach of the Russian national team
“The same team, without two or three players, finished in second place in the qualification for the 2022 World Cup a year and a half or two ago. During this time, of course, the state is different, but the motivation, if we were now playing in the national team for the European Championship, would be different.”
At the same time, the second objective, to get together and play, is absolutely clear. It’s good that we can play against Qatar. In the past we could have played a friendly match with them (and played), why not? But you can’t treat these games like games in normal times. This is still not the same level of motivation. Not the same level of connections between players. Now the level of intensity is different. And sometimes even the wrong players.
Let Karpin experiment. Let him call young soccer players and try to make some connections. And let the national team give more reasons to write about itself: it travels to different cities to train, plays with teams participating in the World Cup and gives interviews. If you score a nice goal, but still lose, the video of the goal can go up on social media and go viral around the world. This shows that the team exists. And not the results of the match against Qatar or Uzbekistan.
