The Russian national football team, based on the results of the qualifying matches, got the opportunity to participate in the 2012 European Championship. Especially for this major sporting event, the optimal composition of players from the point of view of the coach was approved.
Three goalkeepers went to Euro 2012 as part of the Russian team. The earliest of all - since 2003 - Vyacheslav Malafeev began to play for the national team. He has been a member of the St. Petersburg Zenit since 1999 and has the status of Honored Master of Sports of Russia. Malafeev's professionalism was awarded the Goalkeeper of the Year award. As part of Zenit, Vyacheslav has repeatedly won prizes in the Russian championship. He also became the bronze medalist of the triumphal Euro 2008 for Russia as part of the national team.
Igor Akinfeev, another Russian goalkeeper, plays for the CSKA team. The list of his awards includes the UEFA Cup and the Russian Cup. Akinfeev was named Goalkeeper of the Year 6 times and received the Lev Yashin prize. The third goalkeeper - Anton Shunin - joined the national team relatively recently, in 2007. Now he plays for Dynamo Moscow.
The defenders included six of the best players in Russian clubs. For one of them - Kirill Nababkin - the European Championship was actually his debut in the national team. He plays for the Moscow team CSKA, as well as two other defenders - Sergei Ignashevich and Alexei Berezutsky. Also, players in this category came to the national team from Zenit St. Petersburg (Alexander Anyukov), Dynamo Moscow (Vladimir Granat) and Rubin Kazan (Roman Sharonov).
The midfield in the team is represented by 9 players. Among them there are those who play for a foreign club - Marat Izmailov plays most of the time for the Portuguese Sporting. He can also be called a veteran of the current team - he played for Russia in the international arena back in August 2001. Among the five strikers there are also footballers who spend most of their time in Europe - these are Andrei Arshavin and Pavel Pogrebnyak, who play for the English teams.
In general, the Russian national team occupies a fairly high - thirteenth - place in the international FIFA rankings. However, many strong opponents await her at the European Championship, because among the teams in this region, the Russian one takes only ninth place.
