Diary / Jonathan Wilson / 22 June 2008 / Leave a comment

Russian football expert and enthusiast Jonathan Wilson on the Arshavin-led conquering of the Dutch

So farewell, then Switzerland. For me the tournament moves on to Austria, which means - fortunately - I get to see Russia's semi-final on Thursday. It also means a hideously early train from Bern to Zurich, and then a flight to Vienna via Dusseldorf. Hideously early, after another late night. Still, after what Russia did last night, who could have slept anyway?

If you want to know a city, Baudelaire said, take a look at it shortly after dawn. Bern had seemed to me a pleasant, old-fashioned, slightly twee place, but as I blearily took the bus to the station this morning I suddenly became aware that the majority of the other people on board were prostitutes. The Swiss capital evidently has a harder edge than I'd given it credit for.

Around the station were dotted the dishevelled remnants of the great orange army, slumped in corners and draped over benches. Leaving Basel last night (actually, just slightly earlier this morning), it felt like witnessing the flight of hordes of refugees. The train on the adjoining platform to mine was rammed with Dutch fans, with at least as many unable to board. All through the city on the long schlep from stadium to station, amid the empty cans and the broken bottles, the torn newspapers and the burger-wrappers, were the discarded accoutrements of Dutch fandom - orange wigs, deflated inflatables, even, poignantly, a large clog.

There was an air of incomprehension about it all. The Dutch are sufficiently used to underachievement for their successes not to have led to hubris, but still, failure and elimination was supposed to have come against Italy or Germany, not against Russia. And particularly not against Russia in this manner. This wasn't Holland being out-muscled, or out-defended, they didn't lose because their conception of the game was less pragmatic than that of their opponents. Rather they were out-passed, out-techniqued, out-thought.

They were beaten at their own game. As Guus Hiddink said afterwards "we outclassed them in every component of the game".

When was the last time one player dominated a match at this level as utterly as Andrei Arshavin did yesterday? Yuri Zhirkov was brilliant, surging forward from left-back, and turning Dirk Kuyt effectively into an auxiliary right-back. Konstantin Zyryanov - his intelligence singled out for special praise by Hiddink - was superb, holding possession, darting, probing. Roman Pavlyuchenko ([9.0] for top goalscorer), a forward who is mobile, powerful, good in the air and, despite missing a hatful of chances has still managed three in the tournament, enjoyed a fine game. And the central intelligence, without question, was Arshavin.

Perhaps not since Michel Platini have we seen a player so able to bend a game to his will.

His dribbling, his crossing, his passing, his vision - all those are manifest, but what really impressed me was how, after Ruud van Nistelrooy had equalised with four minutes remaining (Hiddink praised his young team for being so "coachable", and you suspect they will have to learn quickly the knack of defending against inswinging free-kicks), when the expectation was that Russia would crumbled, he dragged his side forward. The moment after which I was almost certain Russia would win came four minutes into extra-time as Arshavin gathered possession 30 yards from goal, darted forwards, skipped by one man, skipped, with glorious inevitability, by another, and then pulled back a cross for Dmitri Torbinsky.

The midfielder's shot, slightly dug out from under his feet, was saved, but the shape of the game had changed. Suddenly it was obvious that Arshavin was unplayable, that whenever he got the ball, Holland panicked. The more they did so, the more Russian confidence grew.

The question now is whether they have two more such big performances in them (and how quickly they can learn to defender dead balls). In the middle of their domestic season, they ought still to be fresh.

More than that, they must be driven now by a joy at the beauty they are producing. In a tournament that every day generates more drama, more wonder, more glory, last night's was another "I was there" moment. I was there when Russia finally cast off the shackles of their inferiority complex and finally laid into one of the western European grandees, and it was wonderful.

Tags: Andrei Arshavin, Guus Hiddink, Holland, Russia