The first talk about the naturalization of foreign footballers for the Russian team appeared a few years ago, and then they seemed only to be impossible projects invented by journalists. Indeed, in our championship the limit on legionnaires has become increasingly tightened . Everything was done so that Russian football players could not interfere with getting game practice in clubs. Therefore, attracting foreigners to the national team seemed incredible.
However, in March 2016, this happened: the thirty-year-old Brazilian goalkeeper of Lokomotiv Guilherme obtained Russian citizenship and received a call to our national team. He will be able to debut in the next control match with Lithuania. But there is a chance that at the 2018 World Cup, another foreigner will play at the gates of the national team - German Bernd Leno.
New foreign candidates for the Russian national team
Following Guillerme, the German midfielder Schalke 04 (Gelsenkirchen) Roman Neustedter (28 years old) should soon be able to play for the Russian national team. He has a different story - he has Russian roots, and his relatives live in Russia. In the club, Roman mainly plays the position of a defensive midfielder, but he can also take a place in the center of defense, which will be very useful for our team if Neustedter still obtains Russian citizenship.
Against the background of all these events, it will be appropriate to recall other foreigners with Russian roots who can play for the Russian national football team. In this article, we will talk about one of the most talented goalkeepers of the Bundesliga - Bernde Leno. Fans closely watching football must have heard that name. But not everyone knows that Bernd Leno can become a Russian.
Leno and Russia
It would seem that there is no shortage of good goalkeepers in our national team, and it’s much more important to consider options for naturalizing football players playing as central defenders or strikers, but you should not hurry to dismiss the option with the German goalkeeper of Bayer Leverkusen. Leno is perhaps the main talent among all the foreigners who have a chance to play for Russia.
Bernd Leno in his 24 years is considered one of the best goalkeepers in Germany. Leno has not played for the main Bundestim team yet: there is no shortage of goalkeepers in Germany either, but Bernd Leno will probably get his chance in the future. The goalkeeper, however, does not set his main goal to wait for a call to the German national team. Leno has already stated that he would not mind playing for Russia. When Bernd was 17, representatives of the Russian Football Union held an informal meeting with his father , but the matter did not go further than the conversation.
Unlike Roman Neustedter, fluent in Russian, Leno does not speak Russian, although he understands individual words. As a teenager, Bernd visited Russia: then they as a family visited Anapa and St. Petersburg. Leno admitted that his brother and parents listen to a lot of Russian music, and the football player himself likes some of Dima Bilan’s songs.
Biography. Carier start
Bernd was born on March 4, 1992 in the German city of Bietigheim-Bissingen. Leno's parents - Russian Germans hailing from Anapa - moved to Germany in 1989.
The youthful career of a football player was held at the academies of Bietigheim (1998-2003) and Stuttgart (2003-2009).
2 years Bernd Leno, whose biography by that time had become an object of interest for many football fans, gained experience in the Stuttgart double, until in August 2011, after extending the contract with the club, Bayer 04 rented it. Leno spent his first match at an adult level precisely for Leverkusenians: on August 14, a few days after arriving in a new team, the footballer took a place in the goal in the game against Bremen's “Bremen”. Leno played for zero in his first three matches in the Bundesliga and entered the history of the championship, becoming the third goalkeeper who succeeded.
Not far off was a new achievement. September 13, Leno became the youngest German goalkeeper ever to enter the field in the Champions League match. At that time he was 19 years old and 193 days, and the Bayer rival was London's Chelsea.
Already on November 30, 2011, Bayer bought the young goalkeeper from Stuttgart. The contract with the "pharmacists" is calculated until 2017. At the moment, Bernd Leno is the first iron number in the team. He became him in his first season for Bayer, knocking out the experienced René Adler from the base, forcing him to leave Hamburg.
Bernd Leno: rating, statistics
According to the results of the 2012/13 season, Leno received the highest mark from the Kicker weekly among all the goalkeepers of the Bundesliga. He took first place in the ranking, ahead of Bayern goalkeeper Manuel Neuer.
Statistics of the football player’s performances as of March 13, 2016:
- Stuttgart II (2009-2011) - 57 matches.
- Bayer 04 (since 2011) - 158 matches.
In the German championships he played 27 matches.