Rossi: We need to continue our good work against Russia

The Hungarian men's national team arrived in Moscow on Tuesday afternoon, the venue for Wednesday's Nations League match, and proceeded to hold its official press conference prior to training. Head coach Marco Rossi stated that apart from in the match against Bulgaria, he is satisfied with the team's performances so far this autumn, and although Russia won in Budapest in September, we didn't play badly then either.

"We made some mistakes in September's match against the Russians, so we lost in the end, but we didn’t fall short of them in terms of the quality of our play", Rossi said. "We have all the necessary information on our opponent, so I don't think they can surprise us on Wednesday, just as they didn't tactically surprise us in Budapest. In that match, my players followed the tactics and rules agreed upon in advance, thanks to which we partially recovered from a three-goal deficit and were able to fight for a draw in the last twenty minutes (albeit unsuccessfully in the end). I don’t expect a big surprise tomorrow either, but we can’t expect to surprise our opponent either".

Hungary's Italian coach stated he doesn’t yet know exactly how many changes he will make from Sunday’s starting lineup squad, but this time he can’t do what he did before the match against Serbia, meaning he doesn’t expect five or six changes.

Responding to a journalist’s question, Rossi also admitted that even though November's match against Iceland is the most important for his squad at the moment, they can't just use the clash in Moscow as preparation for their final European Championship qualifier.

"When we wear the Hungarian badge, we can't think about preparing for another, later match. Every national-team match is important and we have to do everything we can to achieve the best possible performance.

The games against Serbia and Russia can give us confidence ahead of facing Iceland and, of course, we can use the experience gained here to be even better in November, but for now, we will only focus on tomorrow’s match.

I’ve seen the right attitude and desire from the team in all of our matches this year and we’ve improved a lot in this since last year, something we want to show on the pitch tomorrow”, Rossi concluded.

Dávid Sigér, who also spoke at the press conference, said: "Russia have a great range of players to pick from, but that they are good primarily as a team, and this is their greatest strength. We need to draw on the confidence we have gained in our previous matches. The strengths of our team are becoming more and more obvious, we have to play brave football against Russia and not be afraid of anything, so that we can match our opponent", the Ferencváros midfielder explained.