Russia v Wales, 20 June 2016

Kick-off: 9.00pm local (8.00pm BST) Assistant referees: Mathias Klasenius (Sweden) Daniel Wärnmark (Sweden) Fourth official: Daniele Orsato (Italy) Additional assistant referees: Stefan Johannesson (Sweden) Markus Strömbergsson (Sweden) Reserve assistant referee: Mauro Tonolini (Italy) Man of the Match: Aaron Ramsey (Wales) Russia needed to win this final group game to progress whilst Wales would win the group due England's goalless slip up against Slovakia. Welsh hopes had been raised by their 2-1 victory against Slovakia, to whom the Russians lost 2-1. On 11 minutes Joe Allen knocked a ball through the Russian defence to Aaron Ramsey who made no mistake, putting away his 11th international goal. On 20 minutes, Neil Taylor scored a second as the Russian defence again vanished into thin air. With Russia's ponderous build-up yielding nothing, a long goal kick put Dzyuba through on goal, but he was unable to beat Wayne Henessey and Wales continued to look very dangerous on the break. Towards the end of the first half, Russia enjoyed two minutes of persistent pressure, and managed to get a soft shot on target from Fedor Smolov, but their overall performance in the first half was dismal, without players of the calibre of Ramsey, Allen and Gareth Bale to add any guile or creativity to their attack and a defence wide open to counter-attack as they sought to chase the game. Wales scored their third after magnificent work by Ramsey who set up Bale for an almost inevitable goal. Russia returned home knowing they had a considerable amount of work to do if their hosting of the World Cup in 2018 was not to turn to a national embarrassment, on and off the pitch. For Wales this was an historic and well-deserved victory.