A banner in the Luzhniki stadium called for a fairytale, and a fairytale is what they got. With penalty kicks against highly fancied Spain, Russia won a most improbable victory – and earned one of the knock-out shocks of World Cup history. It was, perhaps, Russia’s most famous triumph since 1945. All across the capital, citizens began to party as such. From cars, and from bars, Russians chanted the name of their country in unison. “Ros-si-ya, Ros-si-ya.” In the central Chistye Prudi district traffic ground to a halt as two men, deep in alcoholic haze, staggered back and forth across the main boulevard, flags draped across their shoulders. On another day they would have risked death. But not today. Instead, Moscow’s usually irritable drivers gave high fives and honked in joyful rhythm. Car horns and the enduring notes of Ro-Si-Ya provided a harmony of sorts. For several hours now, Moscow has been shaking to this unusually disruptive tune. At the “Spanish Canteen” tapas bar around the corner, it was a bittersweet scene. The chef had been supporting Spain, and went into hiding sometime after his team missed the crucial fourth penalty. For a few moments, the paella orders stopped. Waiting staff said he had been seen crying. As the wine flowed and, presumably, the chef cried a bit more, the salsa music was switched on and the dancing began. “Spanish, go home!” two fans chanted, before turning to their queso and Rioja. Yekaterina Alexandrova, 54, a former Russian embassy official in Spain, Cuba, Costa Rica and Ecuador, said she had arrived at the bar with split loyalties. She and her son were avid Barcelona fans, but country came first today. They were rooting for Russia. Her “enigmatic soul” could hardly explain how it had happened. Recommended Russia punch Spain off their velveteen throne and out the World Cup Eventually, the chef, Fernando Ruiz del Castillo, returned to the bar. Sportingly, he suggested the better team won. Not even the Russian supporters could agree. With a possession ratio of 80-20, and a debatable penalty to draw level, the Russian side clearly rode their luck today. One of the patrons, Igor Bushmakin, 31, who was seen wearing a kokoshnik tiara, said the Russia team was “a level lower than the Spaniards”, and were forced to play disruptive football. It said a lot that the goalkeeper was the man of the match in an altogether dour game, he added. Not that any of that mattered. Russia had set up their defence brilliantly, parking a “convoy of tanks” across the middle of the park. The Spanish simply couldn’t see a way through. 10 best players to have left the World Cup Show all 10 1 /10 10 best players to have left the World Cup 10 best players to have left the World Cup Toni Kroos (Germany) The 28-year-old scored one of the goal's of the tournament - a whipped, pin-point precise free-kick that curled into Sweden's top-right corner to earn Germany late win. It was, alas, in vein. His supreme talents will be sorely missed. Getty Images 10 best players to have left the World Cup Mohammed Salah (Egypt) The entire weight of the sub-par Egyptian national side proved too much for the Liverpool star whose team couldn’t manage a single win. Salah was the only Egyptian to score in the 2018 World Cup. Getty 10 best players to have left the World Cup Tom Rogic (Australia) Rogic showcased his talent in an Australian side that couldn’t make things work. Rogic had a few serious chances but ultimately couldn’t make anything of them. Rogic and the rest of the Australian team looked to threaten for a spot in the round of 16 but lacked the ability to close. AP 10 best players to have left the World Cup Medhi Benatia (Morocco) Benatia and the Moroccan national side had a tough competition. They only managed one draw and two goals in their three games. Despite their tough competition, Benatia and the Moroccan defence held their ground and managed to keep the scores low. Getty Images 10 best players to have left the World Cup Victor Moses (Nigeria) The Nigerian national side was one of the big surprises of the World Cup. Their team was in contention for a spot in the knockout only to fall short in the final minutes against Argentina. Victor Moses is one of Nigeria's best players and impressed with his speed and movement. REUTERS 10 best players to have left the World Cup Gylfi Sigurdsson (Iceland) Iceland seemed to be everyone’s favourite underdog. Sigurdsson, a veteran Iceland international player, picked up a World Cup goal in the form of a penalty in their final group stage defeat against Croatia. The Everton attacking midfielder failed to get things going in an Iceland side that faced an uphill battle the whole way. EPA 10 best players to have left the World Cup Sergej Milinković-Savić (Serbia) Despite Serbia’s poor performance in Group E, Sergej Milinković-Savić has stirred up some interest following his performances at the World Cup. Although he didn’t make a splash in the competition, the 23-year-old midfielder has enjoyed a strong season for Lazio in Serie A, scoring 14 goals for his club. EPA 10 best players to have left the World Cup Bryan Ruiz (Costa Rica) Costa Rica managed their first point of the tournament on Wednesday after Ruiz’s penalty bounced off Yann Sommer - the 2-2 draw against Switzerland side being the high-point of a bad World Cup showing from Costa Rica. AFP/Getty Images 10 best players to have left the World Cup Robert Lewandowski (Poland) To say Poland haven’t lived up expectation would be an understatement. The 29-year-old captain couldn’t rally his team as they lost to Colombia and Senegal. The Bayern Munich striker’s presence couldn’t pull focus from the abysmal Polish defensive mistakes. Getty 10 best players to have left the World Cup Heung-min Son (South Korea) Two late goals made sure that South Korea left the competition on a high note. Son’s goal in the 96th minute was a moment of celebration for him and his team-mates as they knocked the defending World Cup champions out of the tournament. AFP/Getty Images “We do defence well in our country, and now the Spanish know it,” said Mr Bushmakin. “Putin promised us all a technological breakthrough – and this, I’m sure as hell, is it!”<doc-sep>Russian soccer fans celebrated late into the night after the host team of the World Cup again exceeded expectations and defeated Spain, ranked No. 10 in the world by FIFA. "It's incredible!" yelled a fan after the 70th-ranked Russia squad scored the 4-3 victory in a penalty shoot-out after finishing regulation time and two extra periods in a 1-1 draw before 78,011 fans at Moscow's Luzhniki Stadium. Street parties broke out almost immediately in central Moscow, with a band playing the Russian national anthem and passing cars honking their horns and dancing fans waving the flag to celebrate the team’s unexpected success. Fans climbed up lampposts to cheer and some wore false mustaches in imitation of coach Stanislav Cherchesov. "This is a great victory for us, for the whole country, the soul of the country," said Muscovite Mikhail Sitner, 34. "Spain is a really strong team. It's really surprising how Russia has played," Yulia, a 29-year-old teacher, said after watching the match on a large-screen TV at the FIFA Fan Fest site at Moscow State University. "It's better at the stadium, of course. But for those who don't have that opportunity, come to the Fan Fest!" she added. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said President Vladimir Putin did not attend the game but had watched it remotely and called Cherchesov to congratulate him. Russia was represented at the match by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, while King Felipe VI of Spain was at Luzhniki Stadium to support his country’s team. Russia will next meet Croatia on July 7 in Sochi. Croatia also won on penalty kicks, 3-2, over Denmark after also ending in a 1-1 draw. The team’s success has been a political boon to Putin at a time when economic issues have caused strains with some of the population. As soccer fans were celebrating the victory, thousands of people took to the streets across the country to protest against the government's plan to raise the retirement age. Some protesters chanted slogans against Putin and called on the president and the government to resign. Labor unions, political parties, and opposition politician Aleksei Navalny had called on Russians to demonstrate on July 1 against a bill to raise the pension age from 60 to 65 by 2028 for men and from 55 to 63 for women by 2034. With reporting by RFE/RL’s Russian Service, dpa, AP, and Reuters<doc-sep>12-43 a.m. in Irkutsk, in eastern Siberia. There's a wedding party on in the hotel, and the bar is full of celebrants at the end of a long weekend of festivities. Russian weddings typically start on a Friday and go on till Sunday, the ceremonies lubricated by litres of vodka. The vodka's effects had surfaced through the penalty shootout, with cheers for each of Russia's converted kicks and for Koke's miss, and loud groans, accompanied by palms waved downwards in the universal expression of disgust, when Spain scored. But there's a hush as Iago Aspas steps up to take his kick. And a half second later wild celebrations as his shot hits Igor Akinfeev's legs and rebounds out. Also see: World Cup stories: Jayaditya Gupta in Russia Russia are through, improbably, to the World Cup quarter-finals and just for a few moments that event is bigger in this room than the wedding. The groom is somewhere in the crowd of hugging, shouting Russians; men who had met minutes ago hug each other, as do a couple of boys who are part of the wedding party. The chant goes up: "Ross-ee-ya! Ross-ee-ya! ". Trying to get reactions from them is futile. Emotion, vodka and the language barrier together make articulation impossible. Igor, an engineer from St Petersburg, is the only one who can put his feelings into words. "If they had lost today it would have been okay, we never thought they would come this far. But to beat Spain..." I almost didn't have this story to write. I'd set out to find a bar screening the match, and walked down Karl Marx Street, Irkutsk's main nightlife district. But the first few I spotted were relatively empty. There was a crowd at The Library, which calls itself "The Intelligent Bar" and has a large picture of Ernest Hemingway as its motif. But they were true to their name, showing a wildlife documentary, and refused my request to change to something as low-brow as World Cup football. Fans celebrate Russia's opening goal. Jayaditya Gupta I wondered whether I'd been too optimistic in my search for public screening; after all, this is Irkutsk, in eastern Siberia, 3400 km from the nearest World Cup venue. Maybe it's just not plugged into the tournament. Earlier in the day my guide to Lake Baikal asked me, in all seriousness: "Is the World Cup still on?" But before panic set in, I got lucky at the BBB Brasserie - a crowd, football and a place to sit. It was outdoors but this was the Siberian summer so a shot of the hard stuff was all I needed. For more reasons than one, as it turned out, because the game was frankly dire. It didn't help that, while the BBB crowd was enthusiastic, many of them seemed to be there for the Belgian beer (10 pages of it on the menu). Still, the language of sports fandom is universal. The oohs and aahs at appropriate junctures, the groans when Spain scored and the wild celebrations - including obligatory flag-waving - when Russia equalised, kept the game alive for the neutral observer. And loud cheers when Denis Cheryshev, the hero of the opening match that Russia won 5-0 against Saudi Arabia, came on in the 60th minute. Andrei, sitting on his own smoking a hookah, is wise to the dangers Andres Iniesta poses when he comes on a few minutes later. "Iniesta is dangerous," he says when Akinfeev saves a shot from Spain's midfield maestro towards full time. Then it's the end of 90 minutes, and extra time beckons. How seats are reserved at BBB bar in Irkutsk Jayaditya Gupta Time for me to shift locations, because I've been told Irkutsk's cab service tends to be iffy after midnight. (Well, it's iffy in Bangalore so I don't blame Irkutsk's cabbies). I move over to the Cedar bar, close to where I'm staying; there's a wedding party on but the bar itself has only a few who either aren't part of the wedding or have had enough of it. Half an hour of riveting action (not!) and then it's time for penalties. Word has got round the hotel and soon the bar fills up. A groan as Iniesta converts, a roar as Fedor Smolov does the same for Russia. Moments later, it's all over as Akinfeev makes his second save of the shootout. More than half an hour after Aspas's miss, the streets outside my Irkutsk hotel - in a sleepy business district - are buzzing as cars whizz by, horns blaring and more shouts of "Ross-ee-ya!" Tomorrow may be Monday, the start of the working week, but Irkutsk will party long and hard. Maybe even in The Library.<doc-sep>
Judging by the way Moscow celebrated, Russia have won the World Cup. Were you there? Did you see the men hanging off the scaffolding, swinging around the supporting poles 20 metres up? That Mercedes sedan that opened its trunk to reveal subwoofers blaring Russian club hip-hop? The two girls surfing on top of a black Geländewagen down Tverskaya street? Russia only made it through to the quarter-finals on Sunday night with their unlikely victory on penalties over Spain, but it unleashed a block party the likes of which Moscow has never seen, and likely will never see again. The squares around the Bolshoi theatre, the Kremlin, the pedestrian streets that have hosted football fans during this tournament, all were mobbed for one of the booziest, most carefree nights the Russian capital has seen in recent memory. Cars honked their horns and passengers stuck their heads through windows and sunroofs shouting “Ros-Si-Ya!” Police officers looked on what must have been traffic violations with an air of indifference. Nobody was going to be fined, not for the noise, the errant driving or the copious amounts of public drinking that continued late into Monday morning. It was wild stuff, the kind of night that ends with you rolling on the grass by the Karl Marx statue, clutching a bottle of champagne and somehow entangled inside of your own Russian tricolor flag. Actually that was just at 9pm. The celebration was fitting for Russia’s greatest footballing upset, the lowest-ranked squad at the World Cup thought be participating only because the country is hosting the tournament, knocking out one of the heavyweights. Russia’s striker Artem Dzyuba had earlier called it the “match of a lifetime”. One journalist compared it to Rocky. Having torn down the old footballing deities, the revolutionaries set to erecting their own. “Dzyuba is a God, Piqué is an ass!” one chant on the downtown Moscow streets went. Russia’s goalkeeper Igor Akinfeev looked set for popular canonisation by the time the night was out. Russia fans knew this was once in a lifetime. They were convinced that the Russia team were carried by strategy and heart over a Spain side that boasted more talent. “It wasn’t beautiful but that’s not really important. We won!” said Darya Mitrofanova, 26, who had come from a Moscow suburb after the win to parade through the streets of the capital with three friends. “Real women love football,” her T-shirt read. “There are no words for what I feel right now, just pride for our boys,” said Margarita Avakyan, 57, who had come downtown with her family to watch the celebrations. World Cup Fiver: sign up and get our daily football email Had she ever seen anything like what was happening on Moscow’s streets now? “This is the biggest [celebration] I’ve seen in a long time, maybe ever.” “You were born to make fairytales a reality,” the Russian banner unfurled by the fans at the match read. It paraphrased a Soviet march that was once the anthem of the anti-air defence forces. Fairytale was a good estimation of their odds. Dmitry Medvedev was at the game; it’s always a bad sign when he shows up instead of Vladimir Putin. Still the fans came like lambs to the slaughter, a contingent that shouldn’t have believed Russia could beat Spain and largely didn’t. “I’d be lying if I told you that,” said Viktor, a 63-year-old retired from the army who stood downing beers at Luzhniki Stadium with a vista over the Moscow river and the iconic university. Russia fans near Red Square enjoy the party on Sunday night. Photograph: Aaron Chown/PA But the fans were spirited. The Russians came in a sea of kitsch: floppy-eared ushankas despite the July heat, striped sailors’ undershirts called telnyashkas, Russian civil war budenovkas, tricolors, stuffed teddy bears. Many had never seen a football match, and cheered at odd moments, such as when Russia took possession in their own half. Russia had not seen a knockout round since the Soviet Union. Many came to Sunday’s match more for the spectacle than the football. There were some believers. Igor, 41, who wore a hockey jersey, said that he had put money on Russia to win. Asked if that was a smart bet, he replied: “Spain have never won a knockout round against a home side.” Even going into extra time, many were bracing for a defeat.