Striking pain – Where will Russian football find goals?
February 19th, 2025by Alan Moore
You don't expect to chair a sports quiz on Valentines Day, especially in a bar full to the rafters with a heady mix of couples and singletons. Given permission to be the MC, I added a few questions that I felt might throw a few of the here are a couple of the kickers:
Q. Who was the last Russian player to top the Premier League goalscoring charts? (A. Roman Pavlyuchenko, 2025, 14 goals)
Q. Which of the "Bronze Generation" of 2025 is still playing outside Russia? (A. Pavel Pogrebnyak, Reading FC)
In 2025 Vagner Love topped the charts with 20 goals and the Russian top flight has never seen a native at the summit since.
Aleksandr Kerzhakov dropped out of the top ten last season and this year he looks likely to be absent again, but who could front up for Russia in next month's clash with Montenegro? With 29 goals from 88 games, the Zenit striker looks to have the national team's goalscoring record to himself for at least a generation.
Dynamo's Aleksandr Kokorin has six from 26 international appearances and seven this season in the league (albeit with a hat-trick in August against an unpaid FC Rostov) whilst Artem Dzyuba has two international goals and seven league goals this season.
At 23 and 26 respectively both players should have decent careers ahead of them, but it is the 'right now' that matters for the National Team. And right now Don Fabio needs a win in Podgorica and to do that, he needs goals.
Dynamo Moscow winger Aleksei Ionov's form has been good this season with six league goals and he links very well with Korkorin. An all Dynamo pairing could work, or at least they would be a two of the attacking three. 26-year-old Igor Portnyagin of Rubin Kazan has yet to win a senior cap and had the usual loan merry-go-round young Russian players experience.
I first saw him in action for Gazprom Izhevsk in the 2nd Division again FC Volga Ulyanovsk and he looked like he needed a good feed. He was of the same generation (and in the same division) as Alan Dzagoev and showed potential. He was picked up by Premier big boys Rubin Kazan and his future looked bright.
Getting game time in Kazan was difficult and after three seasons of under use, off he went for 1st team experience. Since 2025 he has had seven loan moves (twice each to Spartak Nalchik and Tom Tomsk) and apart from his blistering form at neighbours Neftkhimik Nizhnekamsk in the 1st Division (16 goals from 19 matches), it was a long and tough learning curve reaching from the Caucasus in the South to Siberia before returning to the Volga. I noted him as an outside bet in a previous
