Though a stuffed animal, even a carcass: why is it not so important as the Russian national team makes its way at the 2022 World Cup under Karpin

"What kind of football is this, for the sake of which you need to go 250 km in one direction?"

- the owner of the ski hotel in Ramsau wondered as she whiled away the time with me in anticipation of the interview scheduled for the evening.

She looked, not only with condemnation, but it became clear: not only did the voiced distance seem to be the other end of the world, it was also categorically incomprehensible, why should I change Ramsau for some incomprehensible Maribor, when the weather had just improved, a village from an early sun-drenched in the morning, and the smell of freshly brewed coffee from the open terraces dizzy?

But what is 250 km along the beautiful European roads, when his national team plays in such a symbolic place for a domestic fan?

That sign, however, was drawn for the national team in 2009 mainly in black paint, but the life of Russian football in this regard is a famous zebra ...

It was absolutely impossible not to recall the curse of that match, sitting on the podium of the Ludski Vrt arena on Monday, and not for us alone: ​​it is no coincidence that the Slovenes made a lot of efforts so that the meeting took place not in Ljubljana, but here, at the very stadium with a gloomy cemetery story that has shattered (not to say - smashed to smithereens) the image of the wizard Guus Hiddink.

Actually, it is no coincidence that Hiddink himself was recalled in Maribor.

In order to reconstruct in memory that very 2009, the only thing missing on the field was him.

The rest of the picture was the same: Russia - on one side, Slovenia - on the other, and Matjaz Kek next to the coaching bench: the same specialist who led the local troublemakers 12 years ago.

Six-time champion of Slovenia, having won three times as a player and three times as a coach, always with Maribor.

What else is needed for a tiny city with a population of 100 thousand people to treat you like the first after God?

We have Valery Karpin.

As a player - also a three-time champion of the country, but as a coach - a pig in a poke, almost bigger than his entire current team.

A familiar Slovenian journalist, seeing me on the podium, jokingly asked, pointing his finger at the start list: “Who are these players?

Where did you get them from?

Are these names really worth remembering? "

The phrase, despite the humorous tone, sounded so mocking that I retorted: "But we are lucky!"

"Where?

In Maribor?

You just made my evening with this phrase! "

- the interlocutor burst out laughing.

Well, then the match began, and after half an hour with a little two goals flew into Slovenia's goal with a difference of four minutes.

The evening was clearly no longer languid.

For the Slovenes, it is exactly so.

The special tsimes was that the central defenders scored a goal for the hosts - and both did it beautifully.

Probably, we will hear the word “lucky” in relation to Karpin's national team more than once, but in principle it did not fit into the outline of this particular match in Maribor.

From the very first minutes of the game it was clear: the Slovenes came out to “kill”.

This feeling simply hung in the air and, alas, it was not deceiving: under a very tough distribution in the first half, Dzhikia, Bakaev, Sutormin, Diveev alternately fell ...

Therefore, the most valuable was not even the 2: 1 score, with which the teams went for a break, but the attitude of the Russian guys, in whose actions from the very first minutes it was read: we perfectly understand what awaits us in this game, and are ready for anything.

In order to see it, it was definitely worth going to football 250 km.

According to the laws of the genre, Karpin's team, of course, should have sat in the second half in a deep defense and played on hold.

The previous match with the Slovaks in Kazan is too fresh in the memory, after which the coach and his team were not persuaded only by the lazy.

Instead, attack after attack unfolded on the field, and it was impossible not to ask the question: what else do we not know about our national team and its head coach?

In August 2008, when Guus Hiddink was reaping the laurels he earned at Euro, and Karpin had just come to Spartak as general director, his current assistant in the national team, Nikolai Pisarev, looked into the future.

“Valera himself is a self-sufficient person and a strong personality. Powerful, ambitious, with good energy, with a lot of experience and knowledge. I think he can be an excellent coach. And I can say with a great deal of confidence that Karpin will not stay too long in the office. Moreover, there is a certain common grain in this: to come as CEO, build the club in full accordance with the way it should be, and lead the team. Surely, in this capacity, he will be wrong. This may apply to the choice of the composition, and substitutions. We can discuss his decisions as much as we like, but the main thing, it seems to me, is to remember that only he is responsible for the final result, ”Pisarev“ dissected ”the ex-partner.

By the way, if we talk about luck, Karpin greatly falls short of Hiddink. Indeed, in fact, one match became decisive in the Dutchman's brilliant (as is commonly believed) career in our country. Not the famous one - with Holland in 2008, after which Russia reached the semifinals of the European championship, but the one that was played on November 21, 2007 at Wembley between England and Croatia. If the victory of the Croatian boys over the English masters had not happened there (by the way, it seems that no one believed in it from the word "absolutely"), there would have been no Euro in Russian football history. And so the championship was not only crowned with a bronze success, but also gave the country illusions for many years to come. Albeit not very well-grounded. Football illusions of Karpin himself, I believe, were dispelled back in the mid-1990s. Actually, Pisarev also told me about this in that very interview.

“We all, including myself, believed Romantsev very much that we could beat anyone. This thought was constantly present in everyone's head: that we are about to aim to win the Champions League. Those who did not believe did not stay in Spartak for long. Due to this faith, we squeezed out of ourselves everything we could. In reality, they were able to snatch one or two games from the top clubs at a certain stage, when they came to Russia at the group stage with one goal - not to get injured on our fields and not to lose with too many scores, "the striker recalled.

Actually, the strength of Karpin the coach is precisely in the absence of illusions. He perfectly understands, having taken the national team in an extreme situation for her, what he got involved in and with whom he is dealing. At the same time, he clearly sees the goal, which at the current stage is not at all to improve the team's game, but to go further. Whether it was a stuffed animal or a carcass, as it was said in an old Soviet joke about an emigrant with a parrot.

All the lamentations that were heard after the match in Kazan on the topic "What are they going to do next, how to play?"

here, as they say, in favor of the poor, and now this has become especially clear.

Has the curse of Maribor been lifted?

They took it off.

Did you come out on top in the group?

The answer is also yes.

But the most valuable thing now is that for some time the tournament situation is entirely in the hands of Russian footballers: it's even surprising that there is no need to calculate who should lose to whom and with what score, so that we go further.

And they will play in different ways.

That's why we love ...