Spring starts: the Russian national team will test itself in Nicaragua and Mali

The players of the Russian national team came together for the first time in 2026. The national team has started preparing for two upcoming friendly matches — against Nicaragua and Mali. These are not the strongest opponents, especially against the background of those with whom the Russians played in the fall. But also not the worst of all the sparring that the team had during the four years of suspension from official tournaments.

Where will the Russian national team's matches with Nicaragua and Mali take place

The Russian Football Union (RFU) has once again decided not to limit itself to Moscow as the venue for the national team's games. Therefore, the meeting with Nicaragua will be held on March 27 at the Krasnodar stadium. Since March 23, Valery Karpin's wards have been holding a preparatory training camp there at the Bulls base in Chetuka.

The team will then travel to St. Petersburg, where they will face the national team of Mali on March 31. This is the third match of the national team in the Northern Capital in the last four years. The Russians previously played Iraq (2-0) in March 2023 and Peru (1-1) in November 2025. Before being suspended from official tournaments, the national team also regularly played important matches in St. Petersburg. The situation was more complicated with the regions, but in recent years the national team has begun to travel there more often.

In other cities, fans rarely see the national team, so its matches attract a high audience even with not the strongest rivals.

So, in November 2024, when the RFU had difficulty finding rivals, Russia played Brunei, a team at the end of the second hundred of the FIFA ranking. The very fact of the match was criticized by many, especially after our team defeated the opponent 11:0 almost without resistance, winning the biggest victory in its history.

But on the other hand, it was visited by more than 30 thousand people in Krasnodar. At that time, it was not easy to organize the match due to transport restrictions: potential rivals had to travel to the city for more than a day due to the closure of the airport. Now the situation has changed, and hosting the games has become easier.

The national team of Nicaragua will arrive in Krasnodar in the near future. According to RIA Novosti, with reference to the RFU, four days before the match, more than 20 thousand tickets were sold with a stadium capacity of about 33 thousand people.

Nicaragua is ranked 131st in the FIFA rankings. Much higher than Brunei, Cuba and Grenada, which Russia played with earlier. But it also falls far short of the teams we faced in the fall — Jordan, Qatar, Iran, Peru and Chile are confidently among the top 100, and some of them are in the top 50. Nicaragua has never reached the finals of the World Cup, and it has qualified for the CONCACAF Cup (the continental championship for the national teams of North and Central America) only twice.

The second opponent looks much more serious. The national team of Mali is in 54th place in the FIFA ranking. She has also never qualified for the World Cup, but she has consistently reached the playoffs at the Africa Cup of Nations over the past ten years, and reached the quarterfinals at the last two tournaments (2023, 2025).

"I'm looking forward to a good game with both opponents, and I hope the audience won't be disappointed," Evgeny Morozov, defender of the Russian national team and Lokomotiv Moscow, told Izvestia. — It is difficult to talk about these national teams yet — their game has yet to be analyzed. But I'm glad that I got into the national team. I always want to go to the national team, especially since I haven't been to it for a long time. Do you want rivals more than Nicaragua? It is what it is. We need to beat this team first, and only then we have to say something.

The Russian national team for the March matches

Valery Karpin added 31 players to the final squad for the two March matches. Of these, there are five goalkeepers, among whom Matvey Safonov, who has established himself at the heart of the French PSG. He joined the national team in the midst of the fight for the French title and victory in the Champions League. Traditionally, Monaco midfielder Alexander Golovin will take part among the foreign players.

Spartak's weak representation in the national team is striking — only midfielder Nail Umyarov has been called up. Most of the players came from the Moscow "Locomotive" — seven people. The wide representation of the Railwaymen in the national team was not hindered even by the winter departure of the long-term captain Dmitry Barinov, who was also called up to the national team, but as a CSKA football player. Five players went to the national team from the "army".

Once again, Valery Karpin is showing interest in the players of the Kaliningrad Baltic, the main sensation of the current RPL season. This time, three players of the team were included in the final squad — goalkeeper Maxim Borisko, defender Mingiyan Beveev and midfielder Maxim Petrov. In the fall, all three were on the extended list, but only Beveev made his debut, playing four matches in October and November. Borisko was in reserve, but Petrov was not on the final list at that time.

Borisko, a pupil of Lokomotiv, once took the field in individual matches of the Railwaymen in the RPL and European cups, but these were one-time hits in the squad. He really gained a foothold at the highest level only this season in Kaliningrad. A year and a half ago, the 25-year-old football player played for Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk, a mid-level player in the First League, where he managed to open up and receive an offer from Baltika.

—Maxim has all the qualities of a Premier League player," Kirill Novikov, head coach of Neftekhimik, who worked with Petrov in Nizhnekamsk, told Izvestia. — When he played with us, our task was to prepare him for the RPL and sell him on financially favorable terms for Neftekhimik. It's good that this was done. Petrov plays completely to his strengths, fits the style of Baltika, understands the requirements of the coach, so everything is going well for him. I think things will continue to be fine. He has a lot of work on the field, dedication. He is quite technical, he plays one-on-one, he has good speed data, he makes decisions quickly in the time limit. So he has all the qualities to be a good RPL player. Moreover, he was also a player of the national team.

The match with Nicaragua will begin on March 27 at 19:30 Moscow time. The game with Mali starts on March 31 at 20:00 Moscow time.