A year before WCup, Russian clubs battle financial woes

Kuban Krasnodar’s fans hoped that signing Andrei Arshavin would herald long-awaited success for their club. The local governor hoped for a pre-election boost. By July 2015, Arshavin had lost much of the pace and attacking skill which made him a star in England for Arsenal years earlier, but he was still among Russia’s best-known footballers. Like most Russian top-flight clubs, Kuban had a close financial relationship with the regional government, so Arshavin flew to the southern city of Krasnodar for a much-publicized meeting with governor Veniamin Kondratyev before signing a contract.

The two posed for pictures in typical Russian official style, facing each other across a conference table with flags in the background. Two months later, Kondratyev won re-election with 83 percent of the vote. Five months after that, as the Russian economy plunged, Arshavin left Kuban amid reports the club had stopped paying his 2.5-million-euro salary ($2.5-million). Kuban was soon relegated and is now floundering in the Russian league’s second tier. Last month, local media reported it faced a lawsuit from tax authorities seeking to have the club declared bankrupt.

After years of the state bankrolling bigmoney transfers and foreign stars’ wages, many Russian clubs are in financial trouble, even as the country prepares to host next year’s World Cup. “Twenty-five percent of the clubs in the Premier League have wages delayed, and in the second division, the FNL, it’s 50 percent,” says Nikolai Grammatikov, head of one of Russia’s two competing players’ unions. “We expect that the next year’s going to be even tougher,” Grammatikov adds. “I don’t want to have a professional club if I am a regional governor because it’s too much expense.”

In an ominous sign for the legacy of next year’s World Cup, just five of the 11 host cities will have a Premier League club next season, with the other six represented in the lower divisions, where financial problems are typically more severe. Regional governments and state-owned companies, like Zenit St Petersburg’s owner Gazprom, own more than half of clubs in the top flight and almost all in the second tier. Several other clubs have close commercial links with government organizations. With the Russian government having slashed spending on social services recently, paying large sums to rich players is an extra burden for state officials.

It’s less attractive for the state as a PR instrument, too, following recent poor results in European competitions by Russia’s clubs and the national team, says Russian football writer Evgeny Dzichkovsky. “There’s just no money,” Dzichkovsky says. “Earlier (state officials) sometimes sacrificed other areas for football, but that’s harder now because of the contrast between football clubs and the rest of society. —AP