The Battle of Volgograd: how Russia beat Iran

The Russian national football team defeated Iran in a friendly match with a score of 2:1. Dmitry Vorobyov scored one of the goals — this is his first goal for the national team. The match itself turned out to be extremely difficult for our players, who performed in Volgograd in front of 42,000 spectators.

Atmosphere

The last tickets for the game were sold on Friday morning. As expected, the Volgograd Arena was filled to capacity. Before the match, there was no special excitement around the stadium and in the city, even banners with posters were not hung. But the local audience, as usual, came to the match without any active calls.

Considering that even the matches with Cuba (8-0) and Syria (4-0) in the previous two years had attracted more than 35,000 people in Volgograd, few people were surprised by the full house in Iran. The Russian national team arrived in the city on Wednesday evening. The next morning, the team visited the Battle of Stalingrad Panorama Museum.

In the starting lineup for the game, the head coach of the Russian national team, Valery Karpin, released goalkeeper Matvey Safonov, to whom he also gave the captain's armband. The line of defense turned out to be somehow connected with Rostov during Karpin's time there. Ilya Vakhania and Viktor Melekhin still represent the Donskoy club, Maxim Osipenko played there in the spring of this year, and Alexander Silyanov played for the yellow-blues in the 2022/23 season.

Danil Glebov, Anton Miranchuk and Alexey Batrakov started in the middle line from the first minutes, Maxim Glushenkov and Zelimkhan Bakaev were closer to the attack. Dmitry Vorobyov was at the forefront of the attack.

Friendly match: the Russian national team will meet with one of the leaders of the Asian Confederation

The guests will not come to Volgograd with the strongest team

The course of the match

The game turned out to be very viscous. Iran played in its own style, imposing a tough power struggle and defending tightly. Russia had little success in attack, and the moment in the 22nd minute turned out to be rather an exception to the rule. But our team managed to use this rare opportunity for a goal — as a result of Anton Miranchuk's cutting pass, Vorobyov went one-on-one with the goalkeeper of the guests and opened the scoring in the match, scoring the debut goal for the national team.

Before the break, Iran was unable to respond in attack. Just before the end of the first half, Mehdi Taremi hit from a good position inside the Russian penalty area, but the shot turned out to be light, and Safonov easily caught the ball. But at the beginning of the second half, the visitors managed to equalize — Amirhossein Hosseinzade scored.

After that, the game resumed its sluggish character without much acuity on either side. In the 68th minute, there were several substitutions in both teams. In Russia, Nail Umyarov, Alexey Miranchuk, Lechi Sadulaev and Ivan Sergeev replaced Glebov, Glushenkov, Bakaev and Vorobyov.

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And literally two minutes later, Alexey Batrakov hit Iran's goal with a long-range shot and brought the hosts ahead again. There were no more bright events until the end of the game. One can only recall the dangerous moment in which Melekhin was injured. Jahanbakhsh ran into our football player in the fight and kicked him in the head. It ended with a yellow card for the Iranian. Melekhin had to be replaced by Mingiyan Beveyev — this is the first match for the national team for the Baltika defender. And the meeting itself ended with our victory.

Russia's next match will be against Bolivia on October 14. The meeting will be held in Moscow at the VTB Arena stadium.