Russia U21

Arena Khimki, with its 18,636 seats, gave the Russia under-21 side a fixed address in 2009, and the team has used it as a base since.

The side was formed in 1992, once the Soviet Union had broken apart and its football structures had to be split among the republics that came out of it. Early that year the squad still turned out as the Commonwealth of Independent States under-21 team, a stopgap arrangement before Russia fielded its own name. The first match under that new name came in Copenhagen on 25 August 1992, a 2-2 draw with Denmark.

There is no nickname of the kind attached to senior national sides; players and commentators call it simply Molodyozhka, the youth team. What it has to show for itself sits in an odd place between two eras. FIFA treats Russia as the Soviet Union's direct successor, so the 1980 and 1990 European Under-21 Championship wins and the 1979 Toulon Tournament count toward a history the current players never lived through. What the team has actually won under its own name is smaller: the CIS Cup, taken three times, in 2012, 2013 and 2016.

Since 2022 the team has had nowhere to put any of this to use. UEFA suspended Russian sides over the invasion of Ukraine, and the under-21s have gone without European competition since, training a generation of players toward a tournament they cannot enter.