Spartak striker Alexander Sobolev and Dynamo midfielder Daniil Fomin were called up to the Russian national football team for the next Nations League matches.

Thus, Stanislav Cherchesov decided to compensate for the absence of the injured Yevgeny Lutsenko and Alexander Golovin, who will not be able to help the team in the meetings with Serbia and Hungary.

Nevertheless, the composition of the national team still raises enough questions, the number of which has only increased over the past week since the announcement.

Certainly, Cherchesov pursued good goals, trying to announce the roster in advance for the upcoming meetings of the tournament.

Thus, he wanted to relieve some of the additional burden of responsibility, and to charge others, on the contrary, with confidence, because an invitation to the national team cannot but affect the mood and motivation.

However, over the past week, enough events have occurred that made, if not doubt the correctness of the choice of a specialist, then at least think about his principles.

It is worth noting that the composition of the Russian national team for the upcoming Nations League matches aroused many questions on the move.

By and large, the stake was made on "proven fighters" who had already been repeatedly involved in the camp of the national team.

Only one of the best scorers of the past season, Evgeny Lutsenko and Andrei Mostovoy, who returned to Zenit from a loan at Sochi, became debutants.

In this regard, it might seem that Cherchesov is following in the footsteps of his predecessors, who were repeatedly criticized for challenging the same players over the course of several years.

So, in 2010, Guus Hiddink was heavily criticized for relying on the heroes of Euro 2008, and later, Dick Advocaat and Fabio Capello were accused of such attachment to certain players.

At the end of the fifth and sixth rounds, this feeling only intensified.

The greatest questions were caused by the choice of Cherchesov in the goalkeeper's line, and the positions of the supposedly main goalkeeper seemed especially precarious.

Marinato Guilherme made a gross mistake in the meeting with Akhmat, and in the match with Zenit he practically had no opportunity to prove himself.

At the same time, and during the confrontation with the reigning champion, he almost brought a goal into his own goal, when, together with the defenders, he arranged a transfer in the penalty area.

If Artyom Dziuba and Serdar Azmun were a little quicker, the score could have changed in favor of the guests.

As for his replacements, Anton Shunin and Soslan Dzhanaev, although they did not allow serious blunders, are unlikely to be uncontested candidates for the Russian national team.

Especially considering that by the time of the European Football Championship they will be 34 years old.

In this regard, once again, the question arises of not recruiting young Alexander Maksimenko and Matvey Safonov to the team, who over the past years have strengthened their status as the most promising goalkeepers in Russia.

Despite his young age, Maksimenko is already considered one of the best goalkeepers in the country and ranks sixth in the league in terms of the percentage of hits reflected (82.4%) and fifth in terms of conceded goals on average per game with two penalties against the red-and-white goal (0.83 ).

There were practically no questions to him even during the last championship, when Spartak was in the middle of the standings and suffered one defeat after another.

During this time, Alexander has repeatedly demonstrated that he is capable of playing no worse than Guilherme and certainly earned the right to try his hand at the first team.

As for Safonov, even though he sometimes makes mistakes when playing the ball, he compensates for this with a brilliant game on the "ribbon".

The gatekeeper of Krasnodar is one of the RPL leaders in terms of the number of saves and has the highest score among colleagues in terms of role according to WhoScored.

In this aspect, only Alexander Belenov can be called a full-fledged competitor.

The Ufa goalkeeper has long been considered one of the best in the country, but he never deserves a call to the Russian national team.

⚡⚡⚡ pic.twitter.com/CkB9uCxSDh

- Russian national team (@TeamRussia) August 25, 2020

Undoubtedly, the decision on Maksimenko and Safonov can be explained.

Both are young enough to represent the country's youth team in the selection for the 2021 European Championship.

It is possible that the leadership of the RFU set before Mikhail Galaktionov the task of breaking through to the continental championship by all means, which a little tied Cherchesov's hands.

But it makes one wonder whether it is really worth putting the interests of the second rather than the first team at the forefront.

Especially considering that in the fall, complications of the situation with coronavirus infection are not excluded.

This can prevent the head coach of the national team from “rolling in” the squad and establishing connections between the players.

In addition, the rotation of goalkeepers in official matches is not the most traditional thing, so it would be logical to take turns inviting Maksimenko and Safonov to the first team to sniff gunpowder, while not greatly complicating the life of the youth, in which, in addition to them, Denis Adamov is called.

Thus, Cherchesov would have had the opportunity to test a talented goalkeeper against a serious opponent, and Galaktionov would have left at his disposal one of the strongest players in this position in the country.

But if goalkeepers are traditionally considered the strongest line in the Russian national team, then defense is the most problematic.

The reason for this is the shortage of high-class defenders, and this is especially true for the center, where a worthy partner for Georgy Djikia has never appeared.

Nevertheless, this year the situation is completely unique, because Roman Neustädter, who is currently in the status of a free agent, was called up to the team.

Of course, Neustädter has a lot of experience, but for a month he has not had playing practice and is probably inferior in condition to both Igor Diveev and Roman Evgeniev, who were called up to the youth team, and Maxim Osipenko.

By the way, all three are highly rated by WhoScored and are in the top 5 best in their position.

The situation with the left flank of the defense also raises questions.

At the moment, only 37-year-old Yuri Zhirkov and Fyodor Kudryashov can play there, and Georgy Shchennikov was not in the team again.

The footballer regularly appears on the field as part of CSKA and performs quite well, but he cannot attract Cherchesov's attention.

With him, he received a call only four times, but never appeared on the field.

On paper, the midfield looked like the strongest line of the Russian national team, but the injuries of Golovin and Alexei Miranchuk seriously weakened its attacking potential, and the damage of Dmitry Barinov hit the support zone.

Subsequently, Daniil Fomin from Dynamo joined it, but his challenge will hardly solve all the problems.

Of course, the team has someone to answer for the creativity, but a certain recharge would not hurt.

The left flank looks weaker than others.

This position can be closed by a number of players, but only for Andrey Mostovoy it is native.

Anton Miranchuk and Zelimkhan Bakaev are used to acting closer to the center, while Rifat Zhemaletdinov and Alexey Ionov are on the right.

Thus, only Zhirkov remains, but whether the 37-year-old football player will be enough for all 90 minutes in two matches in a row is a big question.

And this despite the fact that Konstantin Kuchaev and Dmitry Rybchinsky were left without a call to the national team.

Midfielder CSKA had a great start of the championship and is one of the leaders of the army team.

In the first six meetings, he scored four goals and shares the first place in the scorer race with Serdar Azmun, Christian Noboa and Denis Makarov.

The Lokomotiv midfielder scored an assistant double in the first round and looked very impressive overall.

However, he did not receive a call to the youth team and was available for an invitation to the first team.

Until Sunday evening, the situation in the attacking line was quite deplorable.

This season Artyom Dzyuba, Nikolay Komlichenko and Fedor Smolov have distinguished themselves once, and the “dry” streak of the Zenit striker has reached four meetings.

The whole trio is clearly not in the best shape, but at the same time enjoys Cherchesov's confidence, while the more productive Alexander Sobolev and Vladimir Ilyin remained out of the application, and Ivan Ignatiev and Fedor Chalov ended up in the youth team.

True, Cherchesov ultimately decided to invite Sobolev, but this was rather an exception to the rule (the same Ilyin never made it to the team).

Moreover, if at first the reason for Sobolev's absence was his conflict with Dziuba, then after his resolution Cherchesov had no reason to ignore the forward.

This season, Alexander continued to improve and currently surpasses his main competitors not only in goals scored, but also in expected goals (xG).

After six matches, this figure is 2.15, which is especially noteworthy, because he has already managed to score three times.

This speaks of a high percentage of chances for the striker.

It is worth noting that the list of players who were not included in the list can be continued.

The second team included the main defender of Spartak Pavel Maslov, the talented midfielder of Krasnodar Daniil Utkin, as well as Konstantin Maradishvili and Ivan Obljakov, who show themselves well in CSKA.

It may be too early for some of them to claim a place at the base, but it will hardly hurt to be next to the leaders and "sniff the powder".