MOSCOW, March 13. /TASS/. Russia’s best football scorer Artyom Dzyuba has been enlisted on the national football team’s roster for two upcoming friendly matches this month, the Russian Football Union’s (RFU) announced on Thursday.
The Russian national football team’s roster has 31 players in total and Dzyuba appears on the list of the national squad for the first time since 2021.
According to the previous RFU reports, the Russian national team is scheduled to play a friendly match against the team of Grenada on March 19 and another one against Zimbabwe on March 25. Both exhibition matches will be played at the Dinamo Stadium in Moscow beginning at 8:00 p.m. Moscow time (17:00 GMT).
In mid-January, the Russian Football Union published its calendar of sports events for 2025. According to the calendar, the Russian national football squad will play ten friendlies this year, eight of them at home.
Russia’s opponents were not specified in the calendar. It did state, however, that Russia will play a friendly in Asia between March 21 and 25 and go to Africa for another one some time between November 14-18.
Last year, Russia played five friendly football matches, three of them at home. The national squad played against Serbia (4-0), Belarus (4-0), Vietnam (3-0), Brunei (11-0) and Syria 4-0). The team was also supposed to play against Thailand at a football tournament in Vietnam but the match was cancelled due to poor weather in Hanoi.
In his most recent appearances playing for the Russian national team, namely during a group stage match against Denmark at the 2021 UEFA Euro Cup, Dzyuba scored a penalty shot.
During his stint with the national squad, Dzyuba, 36, scored 30 goals over 50 appearances, tied for most in the history of the national team with Alexander Kerzhakov (30 goals in 90 matches played) and four more than 2nd place Vladimir Beschastnykh (26 goals in 71 matches played).
At the 2018 FIFA World Cup, hosted by Russia in 11 cities across the country, Dzyuba led Russia to the quarterfinals stage of the global football championship, where Russia lost to Croatia in a penalty shootout (3-4) following a tense match, which ended with a 2-2 draw in the main time. Dzyuba scored three goals and had two assists at the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
Russia’s football ban
The world’s governing football body, FIFA, announced on February 28, 2022, that the Russian national team and all professional clubs representing the country were barred from participating in FIFA tournaments.
In turn, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) made a similar decision regarding the Russian national football team’s participation in UEFA tournaments.
Both FIFA and UEFA cited Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine as grounds for their respective bans on Russian teams’ participation in competitions.