Cherchesov: Match against Hungary was not easy to play

Russian national team manager Stanislav Cherchesov answered questions from journalists at a press conference upon completion of Hungary vs Russia (0-3) test match in Budapest.

Stanislav Cherchesov, Russian national team manager:

- What happened to Zobnin?

- Let us not put the cart before the horse. His knee is painful and swelled a little. Roman will undergo medical examination yesterday and we will know for sure.

- Are you pleased by Yerokhin’s performance on Zobnin’s position?

- To begin with, Yerokhin has already appeared in the main lineup previously. All substitutes – namely Poloz, Miranchuk, Tarasov, Smolnikov and Shishkin, played their role in the match. I would not like to mark anyone in particular. There were indeed certain misdoings but we will work on them as usual.

- Did you replace Dzhikiya just to keep on the safe side or the player suffered an injury?

- Georgiy suffered a light injury. But even if he did not, we planned to let Shishkin play for 15-20 minutes. We have time limitations and therefore have to test as many things as we can.

- What can you say about offensive performance? It looked like passed were not well-placed enough. Smolov scored the first one due to his individual skills and the second goal was an own goal...

- When it comes to Smolov’s individual skills, we were sketching his breakaways into that area during transition from defensive into attack. Then Fedor made a brilliant performance. As for passes, we indeed need to rectify certain misdoings and make our play look more integral.

- Was the match against Hungary an easy one for Russians?

- No. We just completed a training camp with heavy workloads in Austria and the squad played their last official match exactly two weeks ago. So it took us the opening minutes to ‘roll into’ the game.

- It looked like you were not happy about your squad’s performance at times...

- No, that is not true. I just lived through those episodes with my players.