Holding Midfield
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As the battles between fans outside the stadium threatened to steal the headlines, Franciszek Smuda and **** Advocaat prepared their sides for what looked, and proved to be (so far), the most interesting match of Group A. Russia were unchaged in their 4-3-3 but Smuda looked to solidify his midfield by bringing in Dariusz Dudka for Maciej Rybus and moving Ludovic Obraniak out to the left in a 4-3-3. As expected Russia were the controlling side, often using a shape that looked closer to a 4-2-1-3 to manipulate Poland’s tight midfield. Roman Shirokov was the roaming midfielder with Igor Denisov and Konstantin Zyryanov sitting deeper, pulling two of Poland’s midfielders forward. This created more space between the lines for Andrey Arshavin and Alan Dzagoev to move into and slide through passes for the overlapping Yuri Zhirkov and Aleksandr Anyukov. Russia were also looking pretty safe defensively. Pre-match the major issue seemed to be how they would deal with Poland’s right wing – Jakub Blaszczykowski and Lukasz Piszczek likely to overload Zhirkov – yet Denisov covered that area really well, making sure Poland couldn’t expose the Russian defence. This didn’t leave a shortfall in midfield because Poland had sacrificed their attacking [...]
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