December 18 – Salaries of foreign players at Russian clubs have escalated dramatically as the Russian ruble has plummeted in exchange rate value. Players, with salaries generally negotiated in euros, are now putting almost 40% more on club wage bills.
The table below, compiled by sports.ru, shows that if the ruble continues to drop in the foreign exchange markets to 100 rubles to the euro, then clubs will have found their costs of foreign players to have more than doubled since the start of the year.
The wage crisis for clubs does not look like relenting and with the transfer window about to open, many clubs will likely look to offload their expensive foreign players fast.
The players may also be pleased to go as there is a growing resentment within the general public towards highly paid international footballers drawing salaries far in excess of ordinary people.
Meanwhile the Russian Football Union (RFU) has said that it will try to settle the outstanding six months salary owed to national team manager Fabio Capello by the end of this week.
Capello and the Russian team’s general manager Oreste Cinquini are owed a combined 181.5 million rubles, according to an inspection by the Federal Agency for Labor and Employment (Rostrud) who said the debt needed to be paid by the end of the month.
The RFU is in financial difficulties with a budget deficit of 500 million rubles ($7.6 million). RFU president Nikolay Tolstykh said that a special anti-crisis commission would be set up to tackle the problems.
Russian player wage inflation
Source: pda.sports.ru
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