Victory over Egypt will put Russia on the brink of their first World Cup knockout game since the Soviet era, but the squad have not forgotten the widespread pre-tournament pessimism

It has been a long time since Russia’s national team have given their country something to cheer. But now a side billed as the worst in a generation stand on the verge of a minor piece of history.

Russia are one win away from something they have not done since the Soviet Union days: reaching the knockout stage in a World Cup.

There are some caveats. Yes, their first win came against a hapless Saudi Arabia. Yes, Russia’s group is probably the weakest, with Uruguay dark horses at best to win the tournament. And yes, Egypt have Mohamed Salah.

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But before the crucial match against Egypt on Tuesday a few fans are daring to dream of making progress for the first time since 1986. “I remember being a boy when they made it out of the group and I swear I’m feeling like a child again,” said Pavel Krasovsky, a Russia fan entering the Luzhniki Stadium to watch Mexico’s 1-0 defeat of Germany. He was with his son Misha, 10, who wore a Russia jersey and had decorated his cheeks with the Russian tricolor.

It was a talented side in 1986 dominated by players from Dynamo Kyiv (now in Ukraine) that went out in extra time to Belgium in the last 16. In vivid detail Krasovsky could describe from memory the Vasily Rats wonder goal from 30 yards that saw the USSR draw 1-1 with France in the group stage of the tournament, held in Mexico.

He said he felt the same electricity – well, perhaps at a slightly lower wattage – when Aleksandr Golovin sent a free-kick curving round the Saudi goalkeeper Abdullah al-Mayouf to make the final score 5-0, an exclamation point to a day that exceeded even the most jaded Russia fan’s expectations.

After all, Krasovsky was one of those non-believers, a person who would have said the team were slow and made it into the tournament only because they were the hosts. Now, he admits, he had been too hard on them. “It’s like a close friend, a brother: you can say things to him that maybe you can’t say to anyone else,” he said. “Yes, I’ve said some rough things about the Russian team. I really thought they were terrible. And I was pleasantly surprised. I’m behind them 100% now.”

There are few moments that Russian fans can point to as triumphs, the last coming a decade ago when a young Andrey Arshavin led the side to a surprise 3-1 victory against the Netherlands in the Euro 2008 quarter-finals. Fans thronged out of the bars on to the Moscow and St Petersburg streets, where the party continued until dawn.

Tuesday may also turn out to be a pivotal moment. “The game against Egypt is extremely important for the national identification of Russian football … you can’t imagine how important it is,” said Igor Rabiner, a popular columnist for the Russian paper Sport Express.

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It is a team that have had a tortured relationship with the sporting press and their own fans, who seem peculiarly talented at denigrating their own side. “Before the tournament the Russian team was very underestimated by the Russian fans and the media,” Rabiner said. “Actually I’m a little bit surprised that the national team continued to speak to the media at all because it was a really bad attitude from the press and from the fans.”

Yet talk they did on Monday, crossly at times, as western and Russian journalists questioned the manager, Stanislav Cherchesov, and goalkeeper Igor Akinfeev in St Petersburg.

“Of course our mood is good,” Akinfeev said in one of his more genuine moments. “When there’s a good result, people are positive, there are pleasant jokes, a feeling of freedom. It’s a bit easier now and I hope it will continue. Everything depends on us. We will try to keep our good mood for our players and our fans. We need to unite.”

But the two looked irked, as though they had not forgotten the attacks from the press that led the Russia striker Artem Dzyuba to ask them publicly to tone down the criticism. Irritation showed in particular when a journalist asked, perhaps for the fifth time, whether Russia have a special plan to deal with Salah. “First of all I’m going to tell you about my team because I believe that we should pay more attention to the Russian team where I play,” Akinfeev said. When another journalist tried to lure him out on Salah, he said it would “not be correct” to talk about Salah apart from Egypt as a team.

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“We understand that we’re not going to be playing against mannequins,” Akinfeev added.

Cherchesov was more curt when asked how he would stop Salah. “I believe in my team and my players,” he said.