New balls please Shayakhmetov

The new adidas F50 ball introduced for the UEFA European Futsal Championship has a fan in Russia defender Vladislav Shayakhmetov, who made it sing during his side's 5-1 Group C win against Slovenia in Budapest.

Winning ball
Shayakhmetov scored the last – and possibly best – of Russia's goals but adopted a shoot-on-sight policy thanks to the new ball, telling uefa.com: "I shot a lot from long distance because the ball is great and it flies very well, so why not shoot from way out? This worked for us today and brought the second goal."

Optimum performance
Ahead from the fourth minute, a flurry of two strikes in ten seconds late in the first half helped Russia subdue Slovenia, and the 28-year-old added: "When you are ahead you're more confident. Your opponents start to take risks and come out and play. This is what happened. We got the first goal, then two more; they opened up and here you go: 5-1. This was as good a performance as we could have hoped for."

Skorovich happy
Russia coach Sergei Skorovich was not going as far as planning for the quarter-finals, with much hinging on Friday's game between Serbia and Slovenia, but said: "We tried to press and dictate the pace. It's up to the fans to say whether it worked, but I think it did. We created a lot of chances and scored five goals. We will try to improve in quality with each match."

No disgrace
Defeat was no disgrace for Slovenia; in a game between professionals and amateurs, they could even be pleased that they managed to score through Kristjan Cuječ, albeit once they were 4-0 down. Coach Andrej Dobovičnik, whose team now need a result against Serbia on Friday, underlined the positives, praising "the team spirit and the fact that for three quarters of the match we defended well given that is exceptionally hard for us to play a good side like this Russian team".

Costly miss
However, forward Igor Uršić, who might have made it 1-1 in the first half but for Russia keeper Sergei Zuev's legs, said: "It's such a shame that we conceded those two goals at the end of the first half. Maybe it would have been a bit different if we didn't, but in the end they are clearly stronger and congratulations to them for that. If I had scored with that break in the first half then maybe we would have had a chance."