Russian team physically gains with each 2018 FIFA World Cup match — midfielder Samedov

ST. PETERSBURG, June 20. /TASS/. The Russian national team was in a much better physical shape playing in a match against Egypt on Tuesday night compared to previous match against Saudi Arabia last week, Russia’s right winger Alexander Samedov told journalists.

The Russian national football squad enjoyed a confident 3-1 win over Egypt during their second Group A match of the 2018 FIFA World Cup held on Tuesday night in the country’s second largest city of Saint Petersburg.

The St. Petersburg Stadium saw an attendance of over 64,460 spectators on Tuesday night during the match between Russia and Egypt.

"The fan support was enormous tonight and we really appreciate it, while all we did was to play according to our pre-match plan," Samedov said.

The score in the match was opened in the second half by Egypt’s captain Ahmed Fathi, who put the ball in his own net in a bid to knock off a shot delivered by Russia’s Roman Zobnin.

Two other goals for Russia were executed by Denis Cheryshev, after a perfect assist from Mario Fernandes, and by forward Artyom Dzyuba. The goal for Egypt was scored from a penalty shot by team’s best scorer Mohamed Salah, who missed the previous match against Uruguay due to a shoulder injury.

Asked whether the team decided to relax a bit after scoring the third goal in the net of the opponents, Samedov said "the score of 3-0 speaks for itself as you may well understand."

"It is not that we were not expecting to score three goals, but we managed to do it and simply realized that we did what we had to do and needed to calmly finish the game to the victory, but this penalty shot interfered," Samedov said.

"We have went through a lot of things, but decided to be calm preparing for this tournament and have managed to achieve the minimum task, which we had to achieve, and now we are moving further and will see what comes next," the footballer said.

Speaking about the physical condition of the team’s players, Samedov said he believed that "today we were in a much better shape compared to the game against Saudi Arabia and I think that we will add up further as we must do it."

Combined with the 5-0 win over Saudi Arabia on June 14 and Tuesday’s 3-1 victory over Egypt, 2018 FIFA World Cup hosts are currently in the top of its Group A with six points.

Russia is playing its final group stage match against Uruguay on June 25 in Samara, while the Egyptian national team is set to take on Saudi Arabia also next Monday in the city of Volgograd.

The national team of Uruguay is playing against Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, June 20, in the Russian southern city of Rostov-on-Don.

A total of 32 national football teams are participating in the 2018 FIFA World Cup held in 11 cities across Russia between June 14 and July 15.

Russia is holding its first time ever edition of the FIFA World Cup, which kicked off in Moscow with a spectacular opening show at the Luzhniki Stadium on the night of June 14.

The country selected 11 host cities to be the venues for the matches of the 2018 World Cup and they are Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, Kazan, Saransk, Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Samara.