Russia recovered from a sobering Three-Zero opening defeat to Belgium to edge previous Finland in St. Petersburg of their second match of Euro 2020, seeing off their harmful opponents with a sensational strike by Aleksei Miranchuk.
Stanislav Cherchesov’s males survived an early scare when Joel Pohjanpalo produced an skilled close-range header to beat Matvei Safonov from a right-wing cross with a objective that was dominated out for offside.
Relieved Russia spent a lot of the remainder of the half dominating possession with out changing their superiority right into a single shot on objective.
That every one modified to superb impact when Miranchuk performed a nimble-footed one-two with Artem Dzyuba contained in the penalty space, then curled an exquisite end past Lukas Hradecky to ship a lot of the Gazprom Enviornment crowd into raptures on the stroke of half-time.
Igor Diveev used all of his defensive nous to thwart Teemu Pukki after the interval with a perfectly-timed sort out after the striker broke free on objective.
The event co-hosts, although, may have gone additional forward, not least when Daler Kuzyayev collected a Dzyuba go on the sting of the penalty space on the left and swung in a shot that appeared destined for the far nook of the web earlier than Hradecky brilliantly intervened, springing to his left to palm the strike behind.
Regardless of securing their first three factors, Cherchesov shall be eager to deal with his gamers’ evident shortcomings in entrance of objective. Rifat Zhemaletdinov ought to have scored in added time, working his well past a few markers contained in the penalty space earlier than blasting a shot over the crossbar.
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