Russia ponders Spain ahead of Lithuania friendly

03 June, 2008, 06:30

The Russian football squad continues to step up preparations for Euro-2008. Guus Hiddink’s men have their final warm-up game with Lithuania on Wednesday. But Hiddink could be forgiven for thinking ahead to their first match with Spain on June 10.

“There is no big secret in the way Spain will play and which of their players will appear on the pitch. Nor for them it’s not a secret how the Russian will play. Nowadays there are so many channels of information that there can be no secrets al all. But of course, Spain are the favorites in the game. They are a very strong team. But we have our game plans and strategies and the players, who can execute it. So we’ll see what the result will be. But we have to surprise them… anyhow, because it’s a team that consists of footballers playing in one of the toughest leagues in the world. We have our ideas of how to beat them but we won’t say it now publicly,” Guus Hiddink said.              

But there are other things on Hiddink’s mind as Russia will find out the extent of its top striker Pavel Progrebynak's knee injury later on Tuesday. A MRI scan will show whether or not the UEFA Cup’s best scorer will be able to play any part in Euro-2008.