Russia confident after outwitting Dutch

Russia have steamrollered their way past Netherlands into the Euro 2008 semi-finals with an exciting brand of football and an ever-growing self belief.

• Their Dutch coach Guus Hiddink plotted the destruction of his homeland’s much fancied team on Saturday, beating them at their own game of attack-minded play to run out deserved 3-1 winners after extra time.
• After early teething problems in their first Group D match against Spain in which their defensive immaturity was exposed in a 4-1 rout, Russia have rapidly learnt how to sniff out and deal with danger at the back.
• They tightened up defensively in the 1-0 win over Greece, added attacking sparkle to the mix to beat Sweden 2-0 before stepping up their performance another couple of notches to tactically outwit the Dutch.
• ‘NOT SCARED’
• A possible re-match against the team that humiliated them in the group stage looms depending on whether Spain beat world champions Italy in their quarter-final on Sunday in Vienna.
• Not that Russia are worried.
• “We are not scared of anyone,” midfielder Diniyar Bilyaletdinov told reporters.
• Their increased confidence comes from their improved results and is also down to Hiddink’s magic quality of being able to get the most out of often ordinary players, enabling him to take yet another unfancied team to the later stages of a finals.
• He has, of course, been helped by the extraordinary individual talent of playmaker Andrei Arshavin and a resurgent Roman Pavlyuchenko but none of Hiddink’s team play at top clubs yet they have got the better of some of Europe’s best players.
• “He is our great coach,” said Bilyaletdinov. “He knows how we must play … he knows about us technically, he knows about us physically, he knows what we must do. He is a top coach.”
• Hiddink had previously led Netherlands to the last four of the 1998 World Cup, South Korea to an unlikely 2002 World Cup semi-final and Australia to the knockout stages of the 2006 edition where they were unlucky to lose to winners Italy.
• Midfielder Konstantin Zyryanov said the fact Russia had upped their game so much during their last two matches gave them the momentum to go even further.
• “We have beaten two very strong teams, I think this improves our chances,” he told reporters.
• “I want to play Spain (in the semi-final),” he added. “We made lots of mistakes against Spain (in the group match) and now we have fixed them very quickly.”