Up until Monday night, Russia's home FIFA World Cup had been a dream. Scoring eight, conceding just one a booking their place in the knockout rounds with a game to spare. However, having suffered a painful 3-0 defeat at the hands of Uruguay, the air the Sbornaya were walking on has dissipated somewhat. With Spain facing them in the Round of 16, here's what they need to learn from that loss to click back into gear.

The loss to the Uruguayans happened largely because of Russia’s own mistakes, and the players acknowledged this themselves afterwards. A team’s quality is not always measured through their ability to create something out of nothing, score wonderful solo goals or put together long strings of passes, but in how ruthless they are at exploiting their opponent’s mistakes.

It is this attribute that makes Uruguay a great team. Against their next opponents, 2010 world champions Spain, the Sbornaya must eliminate any carelessness to get lady luck back on their side, a factor Artyom Dzyuba cited in the defeat.

The South Americans clearly dominated at set pieces, scoring once from a free-kick and twice from corners, which proved to be more than enough for La Celeste. Towards the start of Stanislav Cherchesov’s spell in charge, his team have been quite effective from the dead ball, but despite scoring eight goals at this World Cup, only one - Aleksandr Golovin’s sublime free-kick against Saudi Arabia - has been from a set piece. Aleksandr Samedov took most of the free-kicks and corners against Uruguay, but he himself later admitted that not one of them posed any real danger. Improvement has to be made here.

The group stage has shown that Cherchesov has more or less found his ideal XI, with only a few possible changes conceivable. After an excellent start to the tournament, Yuri Gazinsky did not have his best performance in the first half against Uruguay. The Krasnodar midfielder was replaced by Daler Kuzyaev during the interval, which brought more balance to the side, even though a comeback was beyond the realms of possibility once Russia went a man down.

However, the decision to make three changes from the team that started against Egypt made it hard for the hosts to find their rhythm. Unfortunately, Igor Smolnikov let his team-mates down with two unnecessary fouls, Fyodor Kudriashov was unable to join in the attack as effectively as Yuri Zhirkov, while Aleksei Miranchuk was a touch disappointing compared to Golovin, who is clearly more comfortable with the pressure at this level.

Zhirkov and Golovin were instead given an important chance to rest, and there is a possibility Alan Dzagoev might be fit in time for Spain, which could be a good option to bolster the team in the second half on Sunday.

Real leaders step up when matches are going badly. When a team is struggling or fate seems to be against you, like with red cards or unlucky deflections for example, true fighters come to the fore - players who can change a game even in the dying seconds.

Against Uruguay, Russia’s never-say-die battlers were Sergei Ignashevich, Roman Zobnin and Artyom Dzyuba. They are the players the nation is looking to for miracles, along with Yuri Zhirkov and Mario Fernandes, and all are expected to start against Spain.

The defeat to Uruguay will have taught Russia a lot, if they can learn from it properly. It was the only time at the tournament when the hosts had some margin for error. The experiment with squad rotation was ultimately justified.

After the game, Uruguayan coach Oscar Tabarez admitted his surprise at the absence of Golovin from the line-up, but given that Russia had already qualified for the knockout phase and the playmaker was on a yellow card from the first match, Cherchesov’s decision looks completely logical in hindsight.

Golovin is a key player for the Sbornaya, and they simply could not risk losing him for the Round of 16. The match also revealed some useful information about the hosts that the coaching staff will undoubtedly bear in mind when preparing for the tie against Spain at the Luzhniki.