By Paul Nicholson
June 18 – The Russians may be on target with their infrastructure build for the World Cup in 2018, but they look to be way off target with their preparation of a team for the home championship. Defeat against Austria in the Euro 2016 group qualifiers again raised doubts over whether Italian Fabio Capello is the right manager for the Russian team.
Various reports in Russia are that Capello’s fate will be decided in the next few days with patience having run out with his team’s performances from within the Russian Football Union (RFU) as well as with politicians and fans.
Russia has won just two of its last 10 competitive games, with one win coming against Liechtenstein and the other awarded by default when a match against Montenegro was abandoned due to crowd trouble.
RFU stand-in president Nikita Simonyan, who is also the chairman of the RFU’s Council of Coaches, said: “We will be not convening the Council of Coaches at the moment and will do it before the games against Sweden and Lichtenstein. Convening the council now would mean adding salt to the wound. What we need now is to calmly deal with the situation. In the next two days we will discuss the situation regarding Capello in the RFU.”
Capello, who only recently had six months of unpaid wages settled, even received heavy criticism from the Russian state Duma with Igor Ananskikh, the head of the Committee for Physical Culture and Sport, calling on the RFU to immediately end his contract after the loss to Austria. “Yesterday’s match was the last chance and everyone saw that we are not heading forward but are on the fast track backwards,” said Ananskikh.
Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko, previously a strong supporter of Capello and integral to his appointment in 2012, also appears to have run out of patience, saying that a decision needed to be taken. Mutko, when asked whether he would be in the running to return to the head of the RFU following the removal of former RFU President Nikolai Tolstykh, said: “I do not want to get so far ahead, but it is highly possible.”
The main problem for the RFU lies not so much in finding a replacement but more in the cost of having to sever Capello’s contract – estimated compensation figures reach as high as around €22 million, an amount the RFU could not afford following the loss of sponsors and failure to attract new partners under Tolstykh.
A group of Russian football fans are attempting to take things into their own hands and raise €21.4 million to buy Capello out of his contract. A fundraising website has been set up called ‘Fabio go home’.
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