February 3 – Russian football’s anti-crisis committee meets for the first time this week as the federation battles against a budget deficit and a growing and crippling wage debt to its national team coach Fabio Capello.
The anti-crisis committee was announced in December by the president of the Russian Football Union (RFU) Nikolay Tolstykh in response to a growing financial crisis that was showing no signs of ending.
At the forefront of the RFU’s problems was its failure to pay Capello and national team manager Oreste Cinquini since June. Capello is believed to be owed more than €8 million but is paid on rubles – as the ruble has plummeted on the currency markets so the cost of Capello has spiralled.
Russian Labor Agency (Rostrud) intervened setting a deadline of January 19 for the wages to be settled. The deadline was missed and criticism of Tolstykh and the financial mess has steadily increased.
The nine man anti-crisis committee is formed of six employees of the RFU and three persons from outside, including the dean of the Russian Economic University, Viktor Grishin. RFU general secretary Anatoliy Vorobiev, who is a member of the committee, said that the situation could be solved by attracting new finance (sponsorship), reducing costs and by making structural changes. But with the debt mounting a cash infusion is desperately needed.
Potential sources of money are drying up fast as confidence in the RFU diminishes. oil billionaire and Spartak Moscow owner Leonid Fedun (his estimated net worth is $5.1 billion) has been particularly outspoken and said he was owed 300 million rubles ($4.6 million) by the RFU after lending it money to fund the national team’s preparation for last year’s World Cup.
Fedun, speaking to Russian news agency Tass, now believes there should be a change of RFU president and that Russia’s Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko is the man for the job: “A big financial hole was left by the previous management. It was not closed. The previous president of the RFU is to be blamed. But Tolstykh (The current president of the RFU) was not able to do this all. He appeared to be ‘not from this life’. RFU needs a strong manager, a financier. I think that Mutko will be back. And there will be more order.
“Vitaliy Leontievich (Mutko) is a winner. He organised a successful Olympic Games. When he was at the RFU there was order, we won a bronze medal in the European championship. When he left football everything started going downhill. My opinion – Mutko is the best candidate. Especially, as I know, he loves football.”
But Mutko has his hands full organising the 2018 World Cup hosting and infrastructure build in a market where currency movements are creating havoc with costs.
Mutko yesterday had to clarify comments that the budget for the preparations for the 2018 World Cup will be reduced. Mutko said that the he was talking about reduced spending for organisational issues, subsidies for the local organising committee and the preparations for the draw ceremony and spend not related to “the key infrastructure, without which it would be not possible to hold the tournament – stadiums, training grounds and bases for the teams, utilities, transport and IT infrastructure and safety measures.”
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