Former Russian national team player talks about "Russian character that Europeans will never have" and becomes a laughingstock online

Former Russian national team goalkeeper Vyacheslav Malafeev does not attribute the current success of Zenit St Petersburg to the huge number of Brazilian legionnaires. The 2008 European Championships bronze medallist made a ridiculous comment about the "Russian character" that other nations will never have.

Malafeev spoke about this in an interview with the propaganda TV channel Match TV. The former goalkeeper of the St. Petersburg team, known in Russia as Zenit Rio de Janeiro, pompously added that Russians allegedly always fight to the end, while Europeans and Latin Americans, on the contrary, avoid fighting.

"No matter how many foreign players Zenit has, all of its successes are linked to Russians. The fact is that competition is based on the Russian character. And this is something that neither Europeans, nor Latin Americans, nor anyone else will ever have. Yes, the person and the player may not be the best, but the character is something that cannot be compared to anything else. This is much stronger than technology. A Russian who is beaten gets up and says: I'm going to bite your head off. Unfortunately, many foreigners here are associated with imitation," Malafeev said.

Readers of the Sports.ru portal scathingly ridiculed these words of the former goalkeeper. They reminded him of how the "characterless Portugueses" scored seven goals against him in a 2006 World Cup qualifier.

"Something about Russian character does not help Russian players in Europe in competition with Europeans, Latin Americans, Africans", "And then the wimpy Portuguese come out and put 7 cans on the pivot and Russian character in the person of Malafeev", "Zenit's pivot is a bag of money", "Is he talking about Russian money? Is this the pivot? Then yes, I agree completely..." - they wrote in the comments.

As OBOZREVATEL previously reported, legendary Spartak Moscow goalkeeper Rinat Dasayev said "Europe is ours" and opposed Russia's withdrawal from the European Football Union (UEFA) and the country's move to Asia.

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