Published: 6 June, 2008, 22:54
Edited: 6 June, 2008, 22:54
Russia’s footballers are the youngest of all 16 teams competing in the European Championships. The 23 man squad, being guided by veteran Dutch coach Guus Hiddink, has an average age of 26.13 years old.
The debate over youth versus experience will come to the test when Russia face the tournament’s oldest team, Sweden, in their Group D clash on June 18.
The average age of the Swedish squad is almost three years older at 29.13. One of their greatest hopes, the legendary former Celtic, Barcelona and Manchester United forward Henrik Larsson, is celebrating his 37th birthday in September.
These are just a handful of the raft of statistics to have been researched by newspapers, magazines and websites the world over. The tournament, being staged in Austria and Switzerland, kicks off on Saturday evening, when a home crowd will support Switzerland against the Czech Republic in Basel.
The German Bundesliga has the biggest representation of any European league, with 57 players from German clubs taking part. The Russian Premier League is supplying 29 footballers, 22 of them in the Russian team. Guus Hiddink’s squad is the one with the biggest number of players from its domestic league.
As well as being the oldest, the Swedes are also the heaviest (average weight 81.04 kg), while Russia has the tournaments lightest footballer, Dmitry Torbinsky, from Lokomotiv Moscow, who weights just 60 kg.
Russia and Sweden are joined in group D by defending champions Greece, as well as star-studded Spain, who have the tournament’s lightest and shortest players.
Igor Semshov, the Russia and Dinamo Moscow midfielder, is also among the ten shortest, at 170 centimetres. Semshov is 32 centimetres shorter than the tournaments tallest player, Czech Jan Koller.