Jordan plain: the Russian national team could not defeat the Middle Eastern rival

The Russian national football team played a draw in a friendly match with Jordan (0-0). Thus, Valery Karpin's team has not lost 19 matches in a row. The last defeat happened back in November 2021 against Croatia (0:1), before our suspension from international competitions. For more information about how the game was played, see the Izvestia article.

The national team has not played at the Lukoil Arena since the autumn of 2021, when it hosted Malta (2-0) in the qualifying round for the 2022 World Cup. The stands were filled to the maximum for a friendly meeting with a low—status opponent — attendance was more than half of the total capacity of the arena - 24 thousand out of 45.

There were few Jordanian fans, but to the right of the press box was a man wearing a scarf with the flag of Palestine. During the break, he strenuously called a nearby Jordanian journalist to take a picture with him. After two minutes of waiting, the goal was achieved.

Everyone at the training camp: how the national team is preparing for the upcoming matches

An open training session was held in Novogorsk before the game with Jordan

The head coach of the Russian national team, Valery Karpin, made an unexpected choice of the team captain. He became midfielder Maxim Glushenkov, who had rarely been called up to the national team before. And a year ago, he got into a scandal after an interview in which, regarding non-call-up to the national team, he stated that he preferred matches with rivals at the level of Vietnam (Russia played with him last September) to training at Zenit with star Brazilians.

Glushenkov has long been criticized for these words. It seemed that the path to the national team was closed to him. But in 2025, Maxim was called up for all three national team training camps and was in the starting lineup in three matches, including the game against Jordan.

Alexander Maksimenko played in the goal of the match — it was his appearance at the start that was announced two days earlier by the goalkeeper coach of the national team, Vitaly Kafanov. Ilya Vakhania, Ruslan Litvinov, Evgeny Morozov and Yuri Gorshkov were on the defensive. In addition to Glushenkov, Alexander Chernikov, Dmitry Barinov, Ivan Oblyakov and Andrey Mostovoy joined the middle line. Dmitry Vorobyov was the only attacker.

As promised by Valery Karpin, the legionnaires who are playing in France are PSG goalkeeper Matvey Safonov and Monaco midfielder Alexander Golovin, as well as midfielder Alexei Miranchuk of the American Atlanta United.

The match turned out to be one of the most difficult for the Russian national team during the ban. Jordan had a territorial advantage for almost the entire game and created several chances to score a goal. Before the break, only Dmitry Vorobyov was able to deliver a decent shot at the visitors' goal. In the 61st minute, we had four substitutions: Alexander Silyanov, Danil Krugovoy, Alexey Batrakov and Kirill Glebov came out instead of Gorshkov, Vakhania, Oblyakov and Mostovoy. And instead of Vorobyov, Tamerlan Musaev came out on the 76th.

It was only closer to the 80th minute that the initiative began to pass to the Russian national team. And Glushenkov almost scored when he clipped the ball that was flying behind Jordan's goalkeeper, but Jordan managed to pull it out from under the crossbar. In the 85th Glushenkov was even closer to scoring, but after his shot, the ball hit the post.

As a result, the match ended in a goalless draw.

"It turned out to be a difficult match, the opponent had the advantage in the first half, it took us a while to roll into the game," Russian national team defender Evgeny Morozov told Izvestia. — But as the meeting progressed, we already improved and played better and better towards the end. We had a few chances at someone else's goal to score and win. But it didn't work out. Nevertheless, we played well against a worthy opponent.

Russia's next game is on Sunday, away against Qatar.