Evgeni Staver

Four clean sheets in the 2025/26 Russian Premier League season, and a run of 388 minutes without conceding — a personal best — marked a significant period for Evgeni Staver at Rubin Kazan. He was named player of the match twice, against Orenburg in a goalless draw and against Sochi. By April 2026 he sat second in the RPL goalkeeper rating alongside Denis Adamov and Stanislav Agakov.

The route there ran through Siberia and the lower divisions. Staver came up at Zenit Irkutsk, then Baikal, before spells at Vityaz Podolsk and Sibir Novosibirsk. His professional career started with Sibir-2, and he moved into the main Sibir squad in 2019, taking a bronze medal in the Professional Football League, Zone East, in 2019/20.

He left for Olimp-Dolgoprudny as a free agent in July 2021, returned to Sibir on loan the following February for eight appearances, then went back to Dolgoprudny before joining Yenisey Krasnoyarsk in July 2022, again for nothing. Two seasons in Krasnoyarsk included a fourth-place finish in the First League in 2022/23 and a place in the promotion play-offs. Rubin signed him on a free transfer in June 2024 on a three-year contract.

He has 21 clean sheets in 56 professional matches. The national team has come close without arriving: he was called into the senior squad in March 2025 for friendlies against Grenada and Zambia and stayed on the bench, and was named in the extended squad for the fixtures with Jordan and Qatar that September. He is yet to win a cap.