Why Russian fans still can’t believe in their own World Cup success

Mikhail Pochuyev/TASS
The Russian team finds itself in the prime spot in Group A after the victory over Egypt. The Russians themselves are so shocked by such a successful start to the Cup, they still believe it to be a dream.

After their 5-0 victory over Saudi Arabia, the Russians beat Egypt with a score of 3-1 in the  2018 FIFA World Cup™, wowing football fans around the world. Russia certainly wasn’t the group favorite. And yet, there’s hope for the first time in history that it might enter the playoffs - but only if it secures a victory against Uruguay on June 25.

Meanwhile, Russia fans still refuse to believe this second home triumph. The game with Egypt has practically set the Russian Twittersphere ablaze.

“This is not our team!”

When Russia took the lead thanks to a bizarre own goal by Ahmed Fathi, Russian fans were still skeptical about the match ending in success.

“It’s not the Russian team doing the scoring - but Egypt.”

However, the 50th-minute finally saw moods soar with Denis Cheryshev’s goal, putting the Russians at 2-0.

“Ronaldo is a loser, Cheryshev is god!!”, wrote one fan.

“2-0, no way ... even did it ourselves this time.”

This, of course, didn’t stop some Russians from suspecting something seriously foul going on: “Guys I don’t believe, it must be a miracle of some sort… Are you sure it’s the Russian national team playing?” 

“The Russian team isn’t even the Russian team at all,” said another user.

It was only three minutes after that second goal that striker Artem Dzyuba - ‘Russian goal machine’ - hammered in the third. From then on, the fans were in a frenzy.

“Wake me up right now what on Earth is going on here,” exclaimed one fan.

“Call 911, that team is on fire!”

“I still suspect this is just our hockey team playing football in disguise,” wrote another fan.

“This is me deleting tweets about how bad our team is,” the humorous caption reads.

Other popular fan theories about Russia’s triumph have included suspicions that tomorrow is the end of the world, and we are all going to die, or that the Russian team has been using an ingenious strategy: “Play like sh*t for two years to make the whole world believe the team is shit, only to come out and kill everyone”.

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