 How much money will be enough for our football? It has become a greedy monster (especially in comparison with other sports). And why does it have to be maintained by the taxpayers?
A premier league team can successfully exist with an annual budget of $12 million. The coach, Yuri Krasnozhan, has proved this in FC Spartak Nalchik for consecutive seasons. The average salary in his team was in the region of $20 thousand per month. Every year he went through painstaking work in building his team, counting every penny, and not trying to “cash in” by purchasing players. While at the same time a few leading players were leaving the team, every year, who had to be replaced. So, make your own conclusions, as to why in other clubs (mainly provincial, who exist at the expense of government funding and forced sponsorships) the budgets are in the region of $25-30 million a year. And then it turns out, for example, that FC Rostov owes a New Zeland offshore company $1million for Akimov, a siberian player, and the Pryadkin brothers and Konstantin Sarsania have a joint agency business, and FC Krylia Sovetov spent almost the entire budget by paying phony companies for contract renewals with their own players (whilst the players themselves did not even know about this).
Why do all these “feasts” come at the expense of the taxpayers and to the detriment of football? Because the fans tolerate and condone this. It’s absolutely necessary to install a very distinct form of social control over the management of football clubs- discussion and publication of budgets, organizing bids/tenders for required services, coaches and managers should be financially responsible for unsuccessful acquisition of players, etc. and not it turns out that football has become a pretext for extortion (or pumping out) money, and speculating with the feelings of the supporters.
As for the clubs with budgets of $ 50 million and higher, there is a generally paradoxical situation – the only guaranteed windfall, if you discard the contribution of shareholders and sponsors, is for the participation in the Champions League (from € 9 million), while for the last 3 years only two Russian teams participated in the Champions League. Thus, out of the 7 leading teams, fighting for the first two places (CSKA Moscow, Zenit, Rubin, Dynamo, Lokomotiv, Spartak, Anji), only two will be able to recover 10-20% of their budget. Now can anyone explain the missions (business plans) of these clubs, especially those which are funded by such corporations- Gazprom, the Russian Railways, VTB bank, etc. At least the private owners (Spartak, CSKA, Anji) are spending their own money, in all other cases, the funding is placed in the hands of “effective” managers. We all know what this leads to. According to our estimates, around $1 billion a year is spent on club football in Russia (money of regional and municipal budgets, state-owned corporations (federal and regional). Colossal funds and minimal result- that’s Mutko Fursenko’s era in football.
What is your opinion about the situation in “FC Anji” as a whole? Many oppose the club’s project, but maybe, there may be some benefit to the level of our championship?
As I have explained, at the moment there does not seem to be any economics justification for the purchase of “Anji”. Moreover, at the moment Anji’s project resembles the projects of FC Krylia Sovetov (Samara) and FC Saturn, involving the same parties (in terms of agents and coaches), but each time the scale is getting larger, and the names of the players are getting bigger. We all know how these projects end up, and I hope that this time the bad consequences will be avoided. Today it is obvious that if Kerimov (owner of the club) changes his plans, the players probably will not see their money, as the revenues from the league do not even cover 10% of the salaries, and there are no significant assets on the balance of the club yet.
Interestingly enough, “Uralkalii”, the company that sponsors the RFA, belongs to Kerimov, there is therefore a direct conflict of interest. It turns out that the club is indirectly financing the football federation, and in return, of course, receiving loyal and preferential treatment (from publically available examples; Gadjiev’s (FC Anji’s Coach) disqualification for only 4 matches, for breaking into the referees’ room).
While at the same time, Anji’s new owners can do a lot for Dagestani youth football, whether this will happen and whether a player from their academy will break into the first team, we will find out in time.
Nikolai, what do you think about the supporters’ mass boycott of games against Caucasian teams?
The reason for this is that the RFA and law enforcement agencies of the Caucasian republics could not provide adequate security not only to the supporters (recent riot police’s beating of Zenit’s supporters in Makhachkala), but even to the players- we all remember the many stories of visiting team’s busses being stoned. Though, to be completely objective, it’s not only the players and the fans that the law enforcement agencies can’t guarantee safety and security to, in the Caucuses, the law enforcement agencies can’t even guarantee their own security.
The boycott is a gesture despair, because the fans don’t have any real leverage in the RFA.
By creating the RUS (the Russian Union of Supporters), the RFA was hoping to gain the control of the supporters, but the inefficiency created at the top of the organization led to the fact that even within the RUS there are various currents and the situation got out of control. So, it is possible that in the near future there will be new supporters’ organizations.
Is there any time left to improve our football and to perform well at the 2018 World Cup? What needs to be done? Or is it too late and we will become spectators of our own tournament?
What needs to be done in order to win the world cup in 2018? What is happening to youth football in our country? Who will be playing in the national team in 2018?
In order to win (or at least perform successfully) at the World Cup in 2018, we had to start investing in youth football three years ago, but alas, even now, nothing positive is happening. The youth schools (except for the big clubs and the Academy of Toliatti) are run in poverty (the salary of a youth coach is from 5 to 15 thousand rubles (200-500 USD), investment in infrastructure and renewal of fixed assets are minimal in nature), the coaches do not have enough education and methodical support, the schools’ graduates have very limited employment opportunities (even in the local second league teams the number of young players is very limited (the coaches are afraid and do want to risk it)).
In 2018, players who were born between 1986 and 1993 and played at a high level, Premier League clubs, before the age of 24, will play for the national team. As we have very few such players, 70% of the national team is already known: the keepers are Akinfeev, Shunin; full backs are Parshivlyuk, Shishkin, Shchennikov, Makeyev, Nababkin, Ivanov; central defenders are Granat, Burlak, Vasin, Buivalov, Taranov; central midfielders are Mamaev, Glushakov, Kolomeitsev, Ryazantsev, Sapeta, Ozdoyev; wingers are Kasaev, Balyaykin, Yakovlev, Ignatiev, Marenich, Gatagov, Ionov, Kombarov brothers; attacking midfielders are Dzagoev, Fayzulin, Golishev and the strikers are Dziuba, Kokorin, Kanunnikov, Dyadyun. Unfortunately, many of then had serious operations. Effectively, this is all there is on offer for the future coach. In order to alter the situation it is necessary to change the goals and objectives of our clubs. The main goal should become the development of Russian players.
I read, in the press, criticism of the work done by the Dispute Resolution Chamber after the dismissal of Nikolai Tolstih as the chairman. In your opinion to what extent is the criticism justified?
It is justified. The Chamber became subjective in a number of cases (as in Grigoriev’s transfer from Spartak to Rostov), and then, there are still no independent representatives of the players. Since the chamber is only the first instance, we successfully appeal against their decisions, right up to Court of Arbitration for Sports in Lausanne.
Nikolai, how did the story involving Nikezic end? How do you assess the work of the Ethics Committee in this case? What is the future of the Committee without Alkhanov?
Nikezic received all the money owed to him until the end of the contract. FC Kuban was fined 2 million rubles. And I can say that the club is very lucky that such limited sanctions were imposed.
In this case, the ethics committee has taken an objective position, but they obviously did not have the courage a little later in the Pryadkin case. As soon as they began an independent investigation, the RFA Executive committee, including Pryadkin himself, stripped of the committee’s powers, and now the committee can not be considered a truly independent body.
Is there any progress in the Pryadkin case?
Proceedings against Pryadkin will begin in the near future in Lausanne, and there, the arguments of the RFA lawyers will look very ridiculous. Stories that the existence of a join business between the head of the Premier League and vice president of the RFA and the sporting director of various football clubs and Fursenko’s adviser, K.Sarsania, are not a conflict of interest will only cause confusion in a decent society. But during the result of their activities is that large sums of money were taken out of the clubs and sooner or later everyone will know about it. So it is now clear to us what the RFA management is like.
Good day! Tell us about your union’s activities. What major cases have you had? Who did you help? Not so long ago I read in a publication that you do not have any victorious cases. Can you please comment of the truthfulness of this statement?
Over the period of our union’s existence, we had about 300 cases (an average of 50 per year).
We believe that our most significant accomplishment was the victory, in Lausanne in 2009, of two cases against FC “Dynamo” (Moscow). For the first time in the history of the RFA, appeals against the decisions of the dispute resolution chamber were successful. This opened fundamentally different opportunities to Russian players, who can now effectively defend their rights in Europe. It is now much more difficult to collude with the RFA. Furthermore, our other major victories include the abolition of compensation for players with expired contracts and the introduction of a solidarity compensation mechanism of 5% of the transfer of each player in football schools.
Why do we have two unions?
We now have not two, but three unions. Recently, Tarkhanov, a coach, has announced the creation of another union and headed it. The thing is that we, fighting for transparency of budgets, fair election of the RFA governing bodies and an inclusion of professionals in the RFA and not government officials, are very inconvenient for the current executive RFA committee. Therefore, they are fighting us with the old “Soviet” methods- trying to create clones in the form of other “submissive” trade unions, discredit us in the media, ignoring our demands, etc. In short, they are fighting with the undesirable union. This does not deter us, the footballers trust us, and we help them, and we will continue to seek changes in the RFA.
Nikolai! Is a repeat of the “Turkish scenario”, to detect and prevent the so called “match-fixing” possible in Russia? If not, in your opinion, what are the reasons?
At the moment it is impossible, because the RFA is not inherently a public organization, but has all the signs of an inefficient state-owned corporation.
Its head is appointed only after approval of state authorities. Moreover, Mr. Fursenko parades this and believes that football has been given to him. The RFA Executive committee consists of football officials, who our union suspects of open corruption, and government officials who actually have a very limited understanding of football. The fight against match-fixing and corruption in the RFA can only take place under the slogan “bees against honey”. The press even reported about the possible fixed matches prior to the games, as was the case in a game between Amkar and Rostov (last year), and in response to it (or rather as an insult), a year later, the RFA appointed Amkar’s former president (Churpakov V.M.), who had a direct link with the events taking place on the field, as the chairman of the football development committee. Here you have the paths of development as they are seen by the RFA. |
FIFPro wants to firmly tackle some abuses in East European professional football. The worldwide union for professional footballers will herewith also call upon UEFA and FIFA to take necessary measures..gif){kind=logo}
The second day of the FIFPro Conference Eastern Europe focused on one the biggest threats in professional football: match-fixing.
