Russia U18

The six European Under-18 titles all came under the Soviet flag: 1966, 1967, 1976, 1978, 1988 and 1990. The nearest miss came in 2015, when a team including Nikita Chernov, Dmitri Barinov and Ramil Sheydaev reached the final of what was by then the Under-19 championship.

The Russian team was built from scratch after the break-up. The Russian Football Union (RFS) was established in 1992, and the Under-18 side played its first competitive matches that October, in qualifying for the 1993 European Under-18 Championship. In 2002 UEFA moved the age limit up a year and the team became the Under-19 side, but the Under-18 label survived for friendlies and for one tournament in particular.

That tournament is the Valentin Granatkin Memorial, which the team has won 20 times, first in 1982 and most recently in 2018. It has been the steadiest source of silverware for Russian youth football, more so than the European championship.

The squad has no ground of its own. It plays wherever a friendly or tournament is staged, in Russia and abroad. It trains at the VTB Training Center "Novogorsk-Dynamo" in Khimki, in the Moscow Region, where the stadium holds between 790 and 1,500 spectators. The colours follow the senior side: red at home, white away.

The 2022 invasion of Ukraine led UEFA and FIFA to suspend Russian teams from their competitions. In September 2023 the youth sides were reinstated to play under neutral status. Since then the Under-18 team has played friendlies against Serbia's Under-18 side and Jordan's Under-20 side.