Today the Russian national team arrived in the city of Minsk, where tomorrow, on March 22, they will take part in the first match of the playoffs of the World Cup qualifying 2016 against the national team of Byelorussia.

The national team has invited the following 7 players from 7 “Gazprom-UGRA”: Sergey Slemzin, Robinho, Vladislav Shayahmetov, Danil Davidov, Dmitriy Liskov and Eder Lima.

We spoke with Dmitriy Liskov. Dmitry participated in two matches of the qualifying round of the world championship 2016 and scored a goal against the Serbs which brought the Russian team victory and guaranteed the first place in the group.

-Tell us how it was at the training camp, if there were some changes comparing it with the preparations for the European Championships?
-There weren’t big changes in the training process. Special attention was paid to training the standards and we also learned and analyzed the game of our opponent.

-What are the expectations of the upcoming tournament? How do you rate the chances of our team?
-Everyone works and trains with a great desire and, of course, are up to win. It is too early to think about the World Cup, first, we need to show a decent performance in the next game against Belarus.

-When you get back from the competition your team will fight over the leadership with the FC “Dynamo”. Is it difficult to cope with such a busy schedule?
Yes, the schedule is really heavy, we have important games ahead both for the national team and for our team. We have a good coaching staff that can competently prepare us for the game against “Dynamo”.