Alan Dzagoev showed why he is one of the most coveted soccer players in the world, scoring two goals as Russia thrashed Czech Republic in their Group A encounter.
The Czech Republic were expected to give Russia a run for their money and started the better side, with Russia finding it hard to make any meaningful chances. After the first 15 minutes though, the Euro 2008 semi-finalists took control.
Arsenal's Andrei Arshavin was at his creative best throughout the game, peppering the Czech defense with one killer through ball after another. The breakthrough came in the 15th minute when Dzagoev drove into the box and played in a ball out wide to Konstantin Zyryanov, who sent a nice cross to Alexander Kerzhakov. The striker's header, however, hit the post, but Dzagoev latched onto the rebound to slam the ball home.
It was 2-0 in the 24th minute. Arshavin played a through ball for Kerzhakov who missed it, only for it to fall to Roman Shirokov, who calmly slotted in past goalkeeper Petr Cech.
Vaclav Pilar cut the deficit in the 52nd minute after the Wolfsburg man took a wonderful defense-splitting pass from Jaroslav Plasil to finish easily.
The Czech's tried desperately to find the equaliser, but Dzagoev finished the game off in the 79th minute. Substitute Roman Pavlyuchenko set up the CSKA Moscow midfielder, who hammered home to make it 3-1. Pavlyuchenko then added the icing to the cake with a nice solo effort in 82nd minute.
Russia coach Dick Advocaat said, while he was happy with the result, his side cannot afford to miss as many chances as they did. "We are quite happy, we scored four goals and in any international game that is a very good result.
"We could have scored more goals; in fact we should have scored more as we had a lot of chances.
"At 2-1 we made it very difficult for ourselves so we have to get better at that because maybe a better team would have scored more against us. But, this was our first game and we are really happy with the result."
The Czech coach Michal Bilek admitted his team will have to go back to the drawing board. "I think we started well, in the first 15 minutes we had plenty of possession, but there were some attacking situations we did not finish off.
"Then we lost the ball in our opponents' half, they broke quickly and it was a mistake that cost us.
"We tried to change it after half-time and we scored a goal, but then we lost the ball again and the opponent punished us and that is why the result is what it is."
