Neither Gazprom nor Putin can help. Russian football is a Potemkin village

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, stadiums and club coffers in Russia were empty. Over the past ten years, oligarchs have been splashing their wallets, and thanks to the purchase of foreign stars, the league has improved. Now uncertainty is returning. In just three years, Russia will host the World Cup, yet it hardly looks like a country obsessed with football. Although the national team belongs to the broader world elite, its quality has sharply declined according to recent results. In a survey before the 2014 World Cup, almost a fifth of respondents believed in winning the world title, but Russia ultimately failed to even make it past the group stage. Its poor form was confirmed with average results in the Euro 2016 qualifiers, where it collected only five points from four matches.

Adidas reduced an important sponsorship contract, and clubs unable to meet their obligations to players are seeing rapid declines in ticket sales and television rights revenues. This season, the average attendance at a league match fell below the critical threshold of 11,000. The national team is facing a similar problem. Ahead of the autumn qualifiers, it invited Azerbaijan for a friendly match. The Russian Football Union chose the recently built stadium in Khimki, a city with more than 200,000 inhabitants. Yet only 3,500 people attended, roughly a third of them supporting the visiting side. Fewer fans had turned up only once before—in a match against Luxembourg 23 years ago.

Russia’s bid to host the World Cup was not given much chance against England, but Putin’s involvement changed the situation. He promised all ticket holders free transport and visa-free entry. At a grand press conference, he even declared that he would “personally stand behind all guarantees.” In addition to Putin, Russia’s most important company, Gazprom, has long been involved in football. It generously funds Zenit St. Petersburg and has purchased stakes in Chelsea, Schalke 04 Gelsenkirchen, and Red Star Belgrade. Between 2012 and 2015, Gazprom also became one of UEFA’s most important sponsors and signed a $90 million sponsorship deal with FIFA.

Moreover, it planned to invest about $1 billion to create a new Super League for the best teams from former Soviet countries, which, like the hockey KHL, would be both a sporting and geopolitical project. Putin saw it as a tool to help achieve the planned expansion of the Eurasian Union. Alongside Gazprom, Putin relies on the loyalty of Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko, one of many who began their careers with him in the 1990s in St. Petersburg. Mutko, whose self-confident manner has made him many enemies in politics, enjoys Putin’s protection. He was entrusted with leading the organization of the 2018 World Cup.

However, Mutko’s authority has been shaken by the national team’s poor results. He has tried to address them by introducing limits on the number of foreign players in the top league, sparking conflict with Football Union president Nikolai Tolstykh. There was even talk that Mutko might try to replace him with someone more compliant. “If Mutko had enough power to do that, he would have done it already. But for various reasons, several high-ranking people (including Putin) won’t allow him to force Tolstykh to resign. Tolstykh himself doesn’t want to leave. He’s a tough guy. It’s almost impossible to threaten him,” Russian sports journalist Igor Rabiner told Denník N.

Tolstykh steadfastly defends the league’s interests, which recently adopted a new “10+15” rule. This foreign-player quota contradicts Mutko’s view, as it allows clubs to register up to 10 foreign players in a 25-man squad (up from the previous limit of 7). Oligarchs supporting top-tier clubs demand immediate success, so officials tend to buy overpriced reinforcements. In the summer of 2012, Zenit St. Petersburg paid €90 million for Axel Witsel and Hulk from the Portuguese league. Mutko wants to curb such transfer policies to give more opportunities to Russian players. “This will not help them at all. They won’t have to fight real, natural competition. They’ll automatically get into the starting lineup, even though many don’t deserve it,” Rabiner believes.

The Football Union has followed the path of wealthy clubs from Moscow and St. Petersburg by hiring experienced Italian Fabio Capello as national coach. With an $11 million annual salary, he became the highest-paid national team coach in the world. In return, the Union expected him to build a compact team capable of fighting for top positions at the home World Cup. However, the latest statistics do not favor Capello. “The players clearly lack the necessary quality; the main problem is certainly not the coach. But paying a coach a fortune when he can’t change anything is, of course, nonsense,” said Artur Petrosyan, editor-in-chief of Russia’s leading newspaper Sport Express, to Denník N.

The problem was that Capello had not been paid since June 2014. Only when UEFA and FIFA took interest did oligarch Alisher Usmanov step in and pay €5.5 million. Rabiner laughs: “No one has any idea who will pay the rest.”

EU sanctions crippling Russia’s economy are also crippling Russian football. Budget cuts have affected the organization of the 2018 World Cup. Mutko must now manage with a budget reduced by about 10%. In a statement to TASS, he assured that stadium construction and related infrastructure would not be affected. Instead, savings would be made in “organizing committee activities” and “various organizational matters.”

The ruble’s collapse has created a huge problem for the league. Clubs have stopped receiving generous subsidies from oligarchs. Contributions from city councils and regional governments have also been reduced. Since most top-flight clubs have weak marketing and cannot survive without outside support, there is now no money for salaries. Four clubs have not paid their employees for more than three months, and Rostov last paid half a year ago. Foreign players on contracts in euros or dollars are making it clear they want to leave in these uncertain times.

Five Slovak players are active at the top level in Russia: Ján Ďurica, Tomáš Hubočan, Martin Jakubko, and the Arsenal Tula duo of Ján Mucha Jr. and Lukáš Tesák. Jozef Tokos, football analyst and FIFA-licensed football agent representing goalkeeper Mucha, told Denník N about his client’s current situation: “The loan deal moving Mucha from Krylia Sovetov Samara to Arsenal Tula was completed only a few weeks ago, so the club currently owes him no money. We would only consider a move to another country if we received an offer equally attractive both financially and in sporting terms.” In the long term, the crisis will affect Russian clubs’ behavior on the transfer market. “Several clubs—including second-division Samara, to which Mucha still belongs—will act more cautiously. There will be a tendency to sign new contracts in rubles. The crisis is likely to influence how clubs treat players. However, in some teams, especially from Moscow and St. Petersburg, huge amounts of money will still circulate,” says Tokos.

According to him, Russia will retain the financial capabilities that remain attractive for Slovak players. Until the crisis, Russian football had no shortage of money—it just couldn’t manage it. Most of the funds still go to overpaid foreign players, Russian stars, and Capello, while coaches and their young players in state sports institutions across Russia have to train in poor conditions. The national team’s performance simply reflects the long-standing stagnation of Russian football. And that stagnation cannot be fixed with another senseless investment in an artificial Super League, but only with systemic changes. As publicist Alan Moore from Voronezh wrote: “Russian football is not becoming, but already is, a crumbling Potemkin village.”