Russia 1 Slovakia 2 match report: Vladimir Weiss and Marek Hamsik sound warning for England

A sobering 90 minutes for Roy Hodgson to watch back, not least because the mathematics are clearer now. Defeat for his team to Wales on Thursday afternoon will mean they require victory over Slovakia in Saint Etienne on Monday to maintain a part in the tournament. But the size of the opportunity England missed by failing to defeat Leonid Slotsky’s team in their opening game also came into plain view.

Russia were pitifully poor. If Slotsky thought that his striker Artem Dzyuba would be fired by perceived indignation over the reporting of English fans’ beating by Russian thugs in Marseille last weekend, then he was mistaken. Dzyuba was vastly less self-expressive than he had been when describing England fans as "no angels" on Tuesday. He was silenced, surely, by the sight of his defenders being torn to ribbons by the Slovakians.

And therein lies the prime consideration for Hodgson and his men. The damage Marek Hamsik wreaked on the Russians revealed that he must be a concern for a defence as vulnerable as England’s. The Napoli midfielder is Slovakia’s poster boy and requires precious little time or space to operate within. He proved it by effectively finishing this game by half-time.

open image in gallery

Hamsik’s exquisite, 40-yard pass to set up the opening goal for Vladimir Weiss, who cut inside two defenders to finish, was delivered instinctively: barely a glance to see the channel into which his countryman was running and to locate it. The 28-year-old’s finish when he doubled the lead – sending the ball in off the upright just before half-time – was of the same class. He is at the nexus of much that the team does.

The big consolation for England is that Slovakia are not possessed with the attacking height which has been their undoing in tournament football under Hodgson’s management. The high ball over the central defence for Russia’s winner last Saturday was of the same kind which undid England at the 2014 World Cup.

They know a little more now about how Slovakia’s defence is penetrable, too. The space Slotsky’s striker Fedor Smolov was given to operate within on the fringe of the area should offer some serious interest to Dele Alli. Yet Jan Kozak’s diminutive creative players demonstrated in the course of a deserved victory that they have pace. There is a strong Manchester City connection to it in the form of Weiss – City’s great young hope when Jim Cassell’s academy side won the 2008 FA Youth Cup – and Robert Mak. Weiss now plays in Qatar; Mak in Greece.

Make no mistake: a side of England's talents ought to brush Slovakia aside. Yet they also face an altogether different cultural proposition in the Slovakian fan base next week: a group free of mind and spirit, enjoying the festival and making all the right noises. The nation’s population numbers 4.3m to Russia’s 143m and yet it was they who populated this stadium, bouncing, singing, rejoicing. Some of them came in camper vans from Bratislava – a full 12-hour, 800-mile trek. They think they have a momentum. Their team has lost one game in 10 now.

Theirs was also a mature, dignified kind of euphoria, it has to be said. There were no boos to accompany the Russian national anthem, which had clearly upset Slotsky, his players and supporters when the English drowned it out in Marseille. Neither was there taunting when Russian fans sang. The whistles came only when Slotsky's side seized possession. This young country has a strong sense of nationhood and only ceded from Czechoslovakia in 1993, yet there is no wish to rub the spirit of independence in the old Communist masters’ faces.

The Russians finally found their voices after a header from Denis Glushakov pulled a goal back late in the second half. It was a measure of the unfathomable aspects of the Russian presence in France that after their goal went in a flare was produced, burning for a moment, sending up smoke, and then going out.

Its presence in the stadium revealed again the incapability of organisers to police this event. But Russia are operating under a suspended disqualification and had been told by Uefa they would be sent home if “incidents of a similar nature [crowd disturbances]” as Marseilles were seen at future games. It was a typically vague warning from the governing body, though one unreleased flare is nowhere near extreme enough misconduct to trigger expulsion.

Slotsky, the tournament’s dourest manager, gruffly declared that he had seen or heard nothing. Wales may send him straight back to Moscow next week in any case. Chris Coleman’s side have grounds to feel highly optimistic about their match with the Russians in Toulouse on Monday.

Just before halftime Hamsik picked up a short corner on the left and struck his own superb curling shot across the goal and inside the right hand post.

Russia made the last 10 minutes intense with a header from Denis Glushakov but the Slovaks survived, leaving Russia with a point from a draw with England at the weekend when their fans were involved in violent clashes with opposition supporters.