On Thursday, 10 November Russia played a friendly game against Qatar at the Al Sadd stadium in Doha. The game finished with the opponents’ 2:1 win. 

During the post match press-conference head coach of the Russian National team Stanislav Cherchesov made his comments on the game, as the FUR website informs.

- Could you please make your comments on the game?

- The game was staggered which I didn’t like at all. We started as we had planned, as we had trained but after the goal we lost steam and started losing the ball possession. We lost the ball once, twice, three times, five times and led the opponent to our half of the pitch that is why we conceded a goal. In the second half it was the same.  We had watched the video, knew that the opponents are very fast in switching from the defence to the attack but still made a lot of mistakes, we created goal scoring opportunities for the opponent ourselves; one of them finished in a corner kick and the goal.  I don’t want to mention the penalty and the missed chances but as for the playing discipline we didn’t show our best. Perhaps, the start of the game made us relaxed.

- What is the reason of such a relaxed attitude?

- I shall repeat that the playing discipline failed. There is a level of the national team where a relaxed attitude is not allowed. There are some nuances that cannot be forgiven even in the match against Qatar. And before you will ask, I shall say that I don’t want to speak about the injuries and look for the problems where it is not worth looking for them. There are situations when the players did on the pitch which is not proper to do. I am not going to look for any excuses. There must be responsibility but today we have experienced a lack of it.

- The team started pressing well but what happened later?

- I shall say again that several players fell out of the game from the very beginning that is why we had to make the substitutions. Of course, we did well at some moments but there were problems too. We shall make an analysis; all the players have a different level of competitiveness and there are some nuances in each case. 

- The team showed a flippant attitude to making use of their chances and conceded two goals after standard moments.

- We lacked concentration to some degree; at some moments the opponents were wiser and faster. I didn’t want to mention but you return me to this topic again. We didn’t have eight players against the first training camp. This is practically the whole team. It is even good that it happened like this. But anyway I told the players about the responsibility in the dressing room. They must join the national team not to play but to win matches. There are no excuses to us. I hope that we will correct the mistakes in future.