Team profile: Russia

Coach Fabio Capello has opted for an entirely home-based squad with a strong emphasis on youth. Its standout attacking players will be the high-scoring CSKA Moscow midfielder Alan Dzagoev, and the Dynamo Moscow striker Aleksandr Kokorin – both aged 23. But don’t be surprised if the Russians reprise the Soviet-era habit (Lev Yashin in 1958, ’62 and ’66; Rinat Dasaev in ’82, ’86 and ‘90) of the having the best goalkeeper at the tournament in the person of CSKA’s Igor Akinfeev.

Russia hardly has a World Cup record, having been in existence separately from the Soviet Union only since 1991, and since then has qualified only twice, winning just two matches against lowly opposition. But the Soviet Union played in seven World Cups, making the semifinals in 1966 and the quarterfinal in 1970. But Russia can’t really claim Soviet football glories, because the majority of players in its most successful squads were not Russian – in what might seem like an irony, today, the core of Soviet football success was always the Ukrainian club Dynamo Kiev.

Picking a squad from the major clubs of Russia’s domestic league gives coach Fabio Capello a more cohesive unit to work with, and that should see it past South Korea and Algeria into second place in the group – after which a round-of-16 showdown against Germany should send the Russians home.

In the heat and humidity of Brazil, the Russians will be like babes in the woods, and may lose even to Algeria and South Korea.

Russia will host the 2018 World Cup, but the openly racist and homophobic attitudes of many of the game’s most passionate fans in the country cast a shadow over that tournament. Black players on visiting teams have repeatedly been subjected to vile racial abuse by chanting fans, and following such an episode during a Manchester City game at CSKA Moscow late last year, Cote D’Ivoire midfielder Yaya Touré warned, "If we aren't confident at the World Cup, coming to Russia, we don't come." The specter of racial of players and visiting fans has Russian authorities scrambling to tamp down the problem, mindful that increasing intolerance for racism in the game today. But the scale of the challenge was underscored in late 2012 by fans of the country’s top club writing an open letter warning Zenit St. Petersburg against signing black or gay players, denying they were racist and insisting they were simply "upholding tradition."