Uruguay vs Russia Match Report: Mellow Suarez is best Suarez.
Credits: The Guardian
In a match where the hosts had a clear upper hand, with how Group A has set out to be, no one expected Uruguay to run rampant against Russia, or did they?
Group A is one of the groups where there were two clear teams who qualified prior to this game. Uruguay vs Russia was a game to see who would top the group, and on paper, many, I’m sure, would expect Russia to continue their goalscoring run. That was not the case in this game, as it was Uruguay who decided to show up, despite two mixed performances against Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
It was rather uncharacteristic of Russia to sit back and defend against Uruguay, who, in some aspects, share the same trait of attacking football, given that both teams had the arsenal to do so. It didn’t have that Artem Dzyuba didn’t have his scoring boots on as well, and Cheryshev scoring at the wrong end.
What was surprising from Oscar Tabarez was his decision to bench the young starlets, in favour of a more experienced line-up, led by Luis Suarez and Edinson Cavani in the front. Another surprising event in the game was the fact that Suarez was not on about with his usual antics of trying to win soft fouls and looking to give any of the defenders a taste of one his teeth can do. Suarez was rather, mellow, to say the least.
It was this mellow Suarez that brought that edge that Uruguay desperately needed in the game. A calm, cool collected self saw him get a great free kick goal, and was key in many of Uruguay’s goal scoring chances. Credit should be given to Diego Laxalt and Edinson Cavani, with the latter scoring a goal in a winning Uruguay side at the World Cup for the very first time.
Over to the host country, now.
It was a rather uncharacteristic showing from the Russians, which I would assume were more than content to settle for second place. It wasn’t helped when Igor Smolnikov was brandished his 2nd yellow card, more than 10 minutes of his first, when he made a reckless tackle.
Russia were toothless in this game, regardless of the one-man disadvantage that they had. They had the firepower, and that was proven against hapless Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Uruguay were coming in as fortunate qualifiers, in my opinion, with their performance over two of the same teams. Russia had nothing to fear, but they let the magnitude of the match get to them, and that’s rather discouraging to watch.
With this, Russia will face 2010 champions, Spain, while Uruguay will play hopefuls Portugal. Both sides will have to overcome a huge obstacle in the form of these two powerhouses, and they’d better make use of the attacking side that they have, or face tears come the end of the round-of-16.
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