By Mark Baber
February 19 – Club officials met yesterday to discuss a cross-border Russian-Ukrainian league. A meeting attended by 14 Russian clubs, but with only one club from the Ukraine turning up.
The organisers of the ‘Unified Football Championship’ face significant challenges in getting their project off the ground, but Russian club officials expressed support for the project. CSKA Moscow president Evgeny Giner (pictured), one of the prime movers of the idea, said of the failure of most Ukrainian clubs to attend the meeting:
“We invited them. If our Ukrainian colleagues think it necessary to come, then we’ll be delighted to sit at the negotiation table with them. Or it’s really not difficult for us, for example, to come to Kiev and meet with them.”
“We are absolutely equal partners and there’s absolutely no arrogance here.”
That only Tavria Simferopol attended the meeting from the Ukraine is not surprising given that last week, the Ukrainian Football Federation (FFU) issued an official statement saying they had received no “official reports, queries, letters, invitations, etc. from the organizers of the so-called “Unified championship.””
FFU president Anatoliy Konkov said: “I believe that any action aimed at creating without our permission or the permission of FIFA or UEFA any other leagues or associations of clubs is an unprecedented violation of the provisions and requirements of the statutes of FIFA, UEFA and FFU, and will be considered in the context of application of disciplinary action.”
For his part, Giner argued the FFU had made its statement without fully consulting the country’s clubs, some of whom have expressed support for the plans.
Valery Gazzaev is playing a key role in getting the new league off the ground, with the first seasons seeing essentially a merger of the Russian and Ukrainian leagues. Alexei Miller, head of Russian state gas company Gazprom, addressed the meeting saying the Unified Football Championship could start as soon as next year.
Lokomotiv Moscow president Olga Smorodskaya said: “It’s an interesting, ambitious project. I think it’s an attempt to reach the next stage for our football within the bounds of very tough competition.”
FC Krasnodar director Vladimir Khashig said the Unified Championship was “a beautiful and a good idea” and FC Rostov vice-president Alexander Shikunov told R-Sport: “My first impression of the project is very serious, in the financial sense.”
Konstantin Remchukov, chairman of Anzhi’s board of directors, has claimed that a unified football championship is a marketing product which “could conditionally be sold for a billion dollars.”
With formidable support from the Russian and Ukrainian business community including those in the energy sector, the ‘Unified Football Championship’ is especially attractive for clubs such as Anzhi, CSKA and Zenit, as well as Dynamo and Shakhtar, who are looking towards the 2014/2015 season, when UEFA’s financial Fair Play regulations come into full effect.
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