Escalated with Chile: the Russian national team lost for the first time in four years

The Russian national football team ended 2025 with the interruption of a four-year winless streak. On Saturday, November 15, our team lost to the national team of Chile with a score of 0:2. This is the first defeat of the Russians during their suspension from official competitions.

Entourage and composition

The match was held in Sochi at Fisht Stadium, and it was attended by more than 32 thousand people. After the 2018 World Cup, the arena has rarely attracted an audience of this magnitude. At the same time, the Russian national team could not play with the strongest squad. Even after the previous meeting with Peru (1-1), which took place in St. Petersburg, the main goalkeeper Matvey Safonov and midfielder Alexei Miranchuk left the national team.

Only one player made the starting line—up for both meetings, midfielder Alexander Golovin. If the Monaco midfielder played 60 minutes against Peru, then he was enough for 77 minutes against Chile. The rest of the participants in the last match either came on as substitutes or did not play at all.

Stanislav Agkatsev from Krasnodar played in goal against the Chileans. Mingiyan Beveev, one of the leaders of the Kaliningrad Baltic, the main sensation of the current Russian championship draw, joined the representatives of CSKA Moscow Igor Diveev, Matvey Lukin and Danil Krugovoy in the defensive line.

Above them, in the defensive zone and in the center of midfield, two more army men, Matvey Kislyak and Ivan Oblyakov, came out. Besides Golovin, Dynamo Moscow's Daniil Fomin started the match with them in the middle line. His teammate Konstantin Tyukavin went on the attack along with Maxim Glushenkov, representing Zenit St. Petersburg.

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Defensive mistakes

CSKA had the largest representation at the start — five players. The match was very difficult for all of them. Oblyakov had to leave the field in the 25th minute due to injury — his back was pinched. The army midfielder had to be replaced by the leader of the Moscow "Locomotive" Alexei Batrakov. To all these problems, Diveev's mistake was added in the 37th minute, when, as a result of his cutoff, the Chileans opened the scoring.

Igor's unsuccessful pass inside the penalty area was intercepted by Vicente Pizarro, after which an attack arose, as a result of which Javier Altamirano won the riding fight and threw the ball to Gonzalo Tapia, who shot Agkatsev's goal.

Interestingly, 20 minutes earlier, the author of the first goal of the guests almost injured Stanislav when he collided with our goalkeeper who ran out of the penalty area. But after receiving medical help, Agkatsev was able to continue playing.

Russia did not create chances at the other side's goal in the first half, and in the second, only Glushenkov scored in the 72nd minute with a powerful shot to the crossbar. At the end of the first hour of the meeting, the head coach of the Russian national team, Valery Karpin, made a triple substitution: Nail Umyarov appeared instead of Fomin, Kirill Glebov instead of Golovin, and Nikolai Komlichenko instead of Tyukavin.

But it didn't really help the owners. And in the 76th minute, they again made a grave mistake in defense. Under the pressure of the Chileans, Beveev tried to knock the ball out of the penalty area, but hit Gabriel Suaza, who ran into him, and Brereton Diaz ambushed the rebound from his foot, shooting Agkatsev at point-blank range.

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Russia is losing for the first time since its suspension from international competitions. The previous defeat happened in November 2021 away from Croatia (0:1) in the qualifying tournament of the 2022 World Cup.

"It was an interesting game with a strong team," Konstantin Tyukavin told Izvestia. — Unfortunately, we didn't create many chances, except for hitting the crossbar. The match went mostly without any chances on our part. What is the reason for the lack of victories at the November training camp? I don't know. I think we had strong opponents, both Peru and Chile. They're pretty serious teams, so it wasn't easy. In any case, it was useful to hold these meetings, to test yourself against the background of such national teams. I am also happy for myself that I returned to the national team a year after my last call-up. I'm happy that I played for her for the first time after a serious injury. After he recovered and started playing for Dynamo again, he set the task to return to the national team. It's just a pity that I didn't score in these matches, and the team didn't win.

Our national team will meet next time in March 2026. The opponents for this period are still unknown.