Russians hoping for something better from the World Cup...

Yet as writer Marc Bennetts explains in Football Dynamo, his brilliant dive into modern Russia and its relationship with the sport that has brought the world to its door this past month, the quote came to be intrinsically associated with the country’s national team, long after Chernomyrdin had stepped away from the microphone. 

As they stumbled and crumbled through the post-Soviet era, missing out entirely in three of the six World Cups that followed the fall of the USSR [and failing to make it out of the group in the three they made it to], the bleak fatalism of Chernomyrdin’s words proved a perfect match for a national team that matched those national traits. 

But with the seventh post-Soviet World Cup landing on their own homeland, Russians had barely even ‘hoped for something better’. The assumption that had long-since swept the vast nation, from the Baltic coast to that bit that pokes out and tries to tickle the top left corner of Alaska, was that hope spent on this team would be hope wasted.

Three weeks on and Russians of all ages would appear to have bypassed hope and motored straight on to hysteria. The penalty shoot-out victory over Spain may have come after the worst 120 minutes of football-related activities since Tim Roth tried to make Sepp Blatter seem slightly human in United Passions, pulling in, eh, $918 at the US box office for his troubles. 

It was an utterly woeful contest but when Igor Akinfeev mercifully ended it, Russia had humbled a very recent champion. The party that erupted inside the Luzhniki Stadium had nothing on the one that was swamping the city outside. 

Such is the relentless nature of the knock-out stages of a World Cup, your correspondent was already moving on to the next thing the following morning as we crossed Moscow to catch a train to a plane to a bus to another stadium. But the capital wasn’t nearly ready to move on. 

It was 5am and the sun had risen a couple of hours but one of the central arteries of the city remained clogged with parked cars pumping out a particularly awful brand of Eurotrance as young and some old raved on regardless. 

Sobriety may have eventually returned but four or five days on, it’s still hard to break through the hysteria. Fuelled by a media bandwagon that is hurtling along apace, huge swathes of Russia have now convinced themselves their boys are not heading back to their homes any time soon. 

Spain are a bigger team than Croatia, goes the flawed logic. ‘And we beat Spain.’ Technically you didn’t, but okay. 

“Russians like extremes but some extremes are not good,” said manager Stanislav Cherchesov in Sochi yesterday, on the eve of their date with the Croats there tonight. “I am trying not to get distracted. I believe we should have our eyes open and ears ready.”

Cherchesov has been one of the quiet stars of this World Cup. A cross between a mid-level baddie in a Bond movie and a well-read clerk in a pocket watch shop, he has managed to hide his emotions under that moustache, remaining remarkably calm as all hell broke loose around him in the wake of Akinfeev’s save last Sunday. 

But he’s been prone to adding his own fuel to some of the bonfire of the extremities too. The first question in yesterday’s press conference was whether the last eight date with Croatia represented that match of this Russian team’s lives? 

“I hope that the most important games are still ahead of us,” he said as the media waited for more meat on those bones. 

What? This is not enough? Well, brevity is the sister of genius, Anton Chekhov said.”

Close. Chehov wrote that brevity was the sister of talent. Russia have plenty to go with the hard and long running style that has drawn so many suspicions to a team and country that can never be fully trusted of being clean. 

“Even before the tournament started, we all knew we could reach the final,” said the most talented of all, midfielder Aleksandr Golovin as smoke billowed from the hysteria meter. “Now, we are seriously counting on it.”

Croatia, however, have more talent. Much more. But if they are to bring a crushing reality down on the Russian people tonight, then they will have to dispel the doubts that have quickly returned to one of the most enigmatic teams in the game. 

Having blitzed through the group stages and humbled Lionel Messi and Argentina along the way, the last 16 had shaped as a chance for Croatia to affirm their status as the team beat on what is the breezier side of the draw. Before kick-off the outlook improved further still as Spain were blown off course by the hosts. 

And yet, just when they looked locked and loaded to deliver, they didn’t. The 90, then 120 minutes were, in essence, the country’s golden generation in bitesize form. Again, they left us wondering if the real Croatia could please stand up?

But there were of course positives to be pulled once the dust settled. Every fancied team in this tournament has turned in at least one below-par performance. Many turned in a couple and that’s why we’d been left with the eight quarter-finalists who got things going on Friday. Croatia managed to deliver a stinker in a knock-out game  – and still survive. 

They survived and progressed thanks not only to their undoubted talent but to their togetherness and their testicular fortitude. Those are two qualities that have too often been in short supply in the Luka Modric-Ivan Rakitic-Mario Mandzukic era, when off-field dysfunction has blighted too many campaigns.  

“I think it says enough about our atmosphere,” said striker Ante Rebic earlier this week. 

“The fact that we have been together for almost a month and a half and there wasn’t even the smallest incident between the players.”

Modric stepping up to the spot a second time in the shootout having fluffed his chance in the closing seconds of extra-time was a stirring moment, the kind of one that come to define an entire campaign. 

“He is our captain, he is our leader,” said Ivan Peresic, another of this era’s pillars. “We all stand behind him.”

Perisic is likely to have to do more than stand tonight in Sochi. He and Modric and Rakitic are likely to spend a chunk of their time chasing down Golovin, who racked up a ridiculous 16km against Spain. 

As the hysteria reaches its crescendo, Russia will continue to run and run. But you sense that if the real Croatia stand up and run too then for the host nation, things will belatedly “turn out like they always do.”