The more phlegmatic among Russian observers tend towards the view that, vibrant and positive as the early stages of this World Cup have been, it would be wise to extract every last ounce of fun from the party because reality will soon bite back. At some stage life will return to normal and the euphoria around the national team’s performance is one uplifting aspect that, on this evidence, may not last a great deal longer.
This defeat had no impact on their progression from Group A but it was a reminder that, faced with practised opponents and a dash of quality, they will hit a ceiling on any normal day. Uruguay sailed past them with an efficient, unfussy display, aided by an early Luis Suárez free-kick and an own goal from Denis Cheryshev. By the time Edinson Cavani had sealed things the game had long since fizzled out and Russia, who lost Igor Smolnikov to a first-half red card, must now seek to make this a bump in the road rather than a juddering halt.
“Luzhniki is my stadium. I love it,” said Stanislav Cherchesov, finding a positive in the fact that his side will now play their round of 16 tie at Russia’s flagship venue on Sunday. They rose to the occasion in demolishing Saudi Arabia there on the opening day; expectations had been damningly low before that game and perhaps the scaling down of projections that will follow this comprehensive defeat may work in their favour. But in practical terms they could not cope with Uruguay, who have played within themselves throughout the group stage but finished top with no real alarms. Russia will need more than their manager’s happy sense of place if they are to eke any more from a slung-together group who are already unlikely heroes.
Cherchesov might feel, in any case, that Russia should have made more of the 42,000-capacity Samara Arena, which was witness to a more raucous, partisan atmosphere than local fans had produced in Moscow or St Petersburg. It was a slight surprise to hear jeers at the end although, in fairness, that seemed little other than a routine reaction to losing. Russia had never played here before and, even when the game had drifted away, nobody seemed minded to let the occasion slide by. The entire buildup had felt fresh: the boisterousness of a provincial city equipped, given the positive swing in sentiment, to love its team.
Suárez’s goal was nonetheless a buzzkill at the time and, in creation and execution, was the perfect example of what happens when errors creep in against quality adversaries. Saudi Arabia or Egypt would probably have let Yuri Gazinskiy off the hook when he played a stray pass into his own half, but a prowling Suárez tends not to forgive, and set in train a move that ended with Gazinskiy fouling Rodrigo Bentancur. The position of the free-kick, 18 yards out and central, already looked a gift for Suárez and the defensive wall’s preference for wrestling over structural integrity opened up the perfect angle. He swept low inside Igor Akinfeev’s left post and Russia’s momentum had floundered.
“When you see such errors I believe you give your opponent the opportunity to do whatever they want,” Cherchesov said, before pointing out that his players had spent Sunday defending set pieces in training only to be undone, in one way or another, by three of them. Uruguay’s second goal came from a half-cleared corner but was lucky, Cheryshev unable to avoid being struck by Diego Laxalt’s wayward shot and seeing the ball fly past a scrambling Akinfeev. The sequence, though, was a handy encapsulation of Russia’s day: Cheryshev, who had come in from the cold to score three times earlier in the tournament, was now the unwitting victim of an unhappy but costly accident.
He had, in fact, started the game brightly but did not last the duration of the first half. Again it was not his fault: when Smolnikov, already booked, hacked down Laxalt a red card was the only plausible outcome and Cherchesov needed to shore things up. On came Mário Fernandes, the right-back who had been one of three players rested after two energy-sapping displays. If things had clicked into place in the previous fortnight, now everything was that little bit awry.
They were more stable in the second half, although Uruguay should have scored more. Eventually Cavani buried a rebound after Akinfeev had saved Diego Godín’s header from a corner, and a strike of no singular merit may prove more significant than it looked. Cavani had looked like a man who needed a goal in each of Uruguay’s group games; now he has one and, like his team, appears to be going through the gears at the right time.
“Let me put the brakes on,” was Óscar Tabárez’s response when asked excitably whether his side could go on to be champions. It seems like a stretch; they need to play a genuine contender before anyone can judge, but looked more balanced here and Bentancur, in particular, showed some expressive touches. “Russia did not put us in a corner; we did that to them, at least in the first half,” Tabárez continued. They tend to save their more pugnacious fare for the big guns so this may have been a valuable sparring exercise.
The question is whether Russia have any more fight. Cherchesov feigned surprise that nobody applauded him at the end of his press conference, as has become the custom after Russia’s World Cup games. “We’ll do it on the 1st,” a voice responded, but it will take some showing for the volume to reach fever pitch again.
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