The final part of the 2012 European Football Championship began in Warsaw on June 8 and will end on July 1 in Kiev. However, the Russian national team dropped out of the tournament on June 16. The history of her participation in this championship began on the very first day, the Russians, together with the Poles, were the first to formalize their relegation, having managed to hold only three meetings of the group stage of the competition.
Our team began its performance at Euro 2012 in Wroclaw, where almost 41 thousand spectators were personally present at its game with the Czech team. They were not disappointed - five goals were scored at Meiski stadium that day, four of them were scored by our team. Goals were scored by Alan Dzagoev (twice), Roman Shirokov and Roman Pavlyuchenko. The Russians got a quite comfortable two-goal advantage by the middle of the first half, but shortly after the start of the second, the Czechs (Vaclav Pilar) reduced the score difference. The coach of our national team Dick Advocaat in the 73rd minute of the game replaced striker Alexander Kerzhakov with his colleague Pavlyuchenko. Six minutes after that, first Dzagoev, and then Pavlyuchenko, finally formalized the advantage of the Russian national team over the Czech team by a score of 4: 1.
Our footballers played the second game four days later at the Warsaw National Stadium, where their opponent was the home team. And in this game, Alan Dzagoev scored an excellent goal after a free kick by the captain of the Russian national team, Andrei Arshavin. This happened eight minutes before the end of the first half of the meeting, and twelve minutes after the start of the second, Jakub Blaschikovski no less beautifully sent the ball into the goal of Vyacheslav Malafeev. In the 70th minute, Advocate again replaced Kerzhakov with Pavlyuchenko, but, unlike the previous game, this did not bring results, as did the replacement of Dzagoev with Marat Izmailov 10 minutes later. The meeting ended with a 1: 1 draw.
The third game of the Russians took place at the same stadium, which was again filled with almost 56 thousand spectators. The last rival of our team in this championship was the national team of Greece. The only goal in this meeting was scored by the Greek Giorgos Karagounis, when the time added to the first half of the meeting was already running. This time, the lawyer carried out the usual replacement of Kerzhakov with Pavlyuchenko much earlier, during the break of the meeting. However, neither this replacement, nor the appearance of another striker, Pavel Pogrebnyak, instead of midfielder Denis Glushakov, nor the appearance on the field instead of defender Anyukov, another attacker player - Izmailov - changed the outcome of the match. The Russians lost 0: 1 and dropped out of the tournament, finishing third in Group A.
