Dick Advocaat's side held the initiative throughout their opening-day victory, and the team's captain says they must thank the 21-year-old CSKA prodigy for their comfort
Andrey Arshavin has expressed his satisfaction with the performance of teammate Alan Dzagoev after Russia opened its Euro 2012 campaign with a 4-1 victory over the Czech Republic.Dzagoev opened the scoring after 15 minutes and midfielder Roman Shirokov added a second less than 10 minutes later, but the Czech's pulled one back after halftime through Vaclav Pilar before the CSKA ace got his second goal late on and Roman Pavlyuchenko completed the scoring.
"I think that, not including the first 10 minutes of both halves, we had the initiative for the whole match," the captain said. "We did what we wanted. We had two excellent attacks in both halves and scored."
He reserved particular credit for the 21-year-old following his pair of strikes.
"Dzagoev's a good lad," Arshavin said. "He's a mature player and he himself knows how well he played. Of course, 2-1 is a dangerous score. If we'd let in one more, it would have been tough but we slowed everything down and Dzagoev scored again."
Midfielder Roman Shirokov, Arshavin's teammate at Zenit St Petersburg in the second half of 2011-12 and scorer of the second goal, also reflected on the importance of his side's clinical finishing.
"We took our chances in front of goal well," he said. "Of course we were aiming for victory. I didn't think that after halftime we would be leading 2-0. We started very watchfully and then scored two goals and everything became easier."
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