ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

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The article includes a detailed presentation of the Russian national football team at World Cups. The Russian team is seen by FIFA as the successor to the national football team of the USSR and their successes are attributed to Russia. In the eternal ranking, Russia is therefore ranked 12th. So far, Russia has participated four times in the final round of the World Cup, while it brought the USSR team to seven. In 2018, Russia hosted the finals, automatically qualified and reached the quarterfinals.

Overview

Russia was part of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1991, Russian players were next to the Ukrainian players the main contingent of the Soviet national team, e.g. Lev Yashin, who participated with the USSR in 1958, 1962, 1966 and 1970 in the World Cup and always survived the preliminary round. Best place was fourth place in 1966.
The Russian team could not build on the successes and always retired in the preliminary round before 2018. In 2018, the home advantage and the associated positioning as a group head could be used and the group phase survived for the first time.

World Cup tournaments

1994 in the United States
In qualifying for the World Cup in the USA, which took place on the 8th. In December 1991, the USSR was drawn in a group of six against Greece, Iceland, Hungary, Luxembourg and Yugoslavia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian team took the place of the USSR. Since Yugoslavia was suspended due to the UN sanctions, the games against Yugoslavia were cancelled. On October 14, 1992, the Russians met in their first World Cup qualifying match on Iceland and won 1-0. The two following matches against Luxembourg and the match against Hungary were also won without a goal. This was followed by two draws and a victory with a goal in Hungary, so that Greece and Russia were equal points before the last game, but the Russians had the better goal difference. Since both had already four points ahead of the third Iceland, it was only about the group victory, because both had already qualified for the World Cup for the first time. In Greece, the Russians then lost 0-1 and were second in the group.

In the USA, the Russians met in the first game to the later world champion Brazil and lost with 0:2. After a 1:3 in the second game against Sweden, with Oleg Salenko scoring the first World Cup goal for Russia in the fourth minute by a transformed foul metre, the Russians were already eliminated. In the last, meaningless game, they won 6-1 against Cameroon. Salenko was the first and so far only player in World Cup history to score five goals in one game. Together with the Bulgarian Christo Stoichkov, who also scored six goals but in seven games, he became the first player to be eliminated in the preliminary round.

1998 in France