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Journalism of Courage
Russia were guilty of making stupid mistakes in their 4-1 defeat by Spain, coach Guus Hiddink said on Tuesday.
“If you see the second goal, if you see the fourth goal, some school teams don’t make those errors,” the Dutchman said after his side were sunk by a David Villa hat-trick in the Euro 2008 Group D game.
“It’s not the members of the defence, it’s a matter of the whole team, knowing when the fire starts and knowing when to be firemen. To be honest I was rather angry at halftime because of this naive behaviour.”
Hiddink said Russia made “stupid errors”, pointing to the fact they conceded a second goal just before halftime.
“We were rather naive in various situations,” he said. “We had a lesson in being punished by the counter-attack (for the second goal).”
Hiddink said Russia had to improve in their next matches against Greece in Salzburg on Saturday and against Sweden in Innsbruck four days later.
“At the end of the game in the locker room I said this is a tournament of three games,” said the Dutchman.
“We have to learn within hours not to be naive. If we can manage to learn fast we have chances in the other two games.”
He said it remained to be seen whether Spain’s performance was an indication of things to come at the championship.
“We will see how Spain react when they get more opposition … against a team who know the law of international competition. We helped them too much today,” he said
