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Your support makes all the difference.It is hard to get carried away with Russia’s performance against Saudi Arabia but the locals will try as hard as they can.
Why not live a little? Why not celebrate a dominant win in the opening game of a World Cup on home soil?
Yes, Saudi Arabia looked like the worst team to play at a World Cup since black and white televisions were commonplace but tournament football is about hope and momentum. You can check both boxes for now.
The early exchanges at the Luzhniki somewhat set the tone, Russia deciding to lump the ball long and towards the penalty area without too much thought. Though perhaps that is to do them down a little.
Saudi Arabia are, on average, by far the shortest team at World Cup 2018 and the Russians are one of the tallest. You may sense the seed of an idea being planted here.
In Fedor Smolov, Russia had a barrel-chested target man to aim for. He may be slow to get going but, like a runaway train, he’s hard to stop when the momentum has built.
Maybe the same will be true for Russia. Smolov started the game brightly, causing all sorts of trouble for a Saudi defence who, if we were being kind, we would describe as having had an off day. If we were being harsh we would ask if they had ever played together before.
Smolov had a good game and Russia were 2-0 up and cruising when his coach Stanislav Cherchesov decided that big needed to get bigger. And so he called for human lamp-post Artem Dzyuba who promptly came on and scored another header for the hosts.
3-0 was delirium inside the Luzhniki, a public who before the game had been keen to play down their chances and lament the decline of the national team were suddenly jumping for joy. Dzyuba, such a lumbering centre-forward that he could barely leap to celebrate his goal, kept his feet on the ground though it mightn’t have been by choice.
While the big guys up front were all fun and games, the true star of this Russia performance was Aleksandr Golovin. A creative midfielder with CSKA Moscow, the 22-year-old prodigy was shunted wide to make space for the team’s star, Alan Dzagoev, but when his club mate went down with a hamstring injury in the first half it allowed Golovin to take centre stage, both in terms of position and the narrative.
His whipped crosses provided the first and third goals for Russia while he also played a part in the second and then scored the fifth as part of a virtuoso display that will have had the onlooking Vladimir Putin purring, assuming he occasionally takes a break from steely gazes to purr a little.
But purr he should, and so should all of Russia. For all the negativity surrounding them, their World Cup and their chances they are now halfway to qualifying for the knockout round - perhaps even more than that.
“Billions of people on our planet wherever we live, whatever traditions we hold, football brings us together,” said Putin pre-match and this team will bring Russia together as long as they keep winning.
So when Denis Cheryshev scored his stunning second, Russia’s fourth, right at the death and then Golovin made it five the realisation was complete: why live in the real world when getting carried away is so fun?
Russia is about to find out.
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