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Football: Nation, City and the Dream.Playing the Game for Russia, Moneyand PowerJim Riordan

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Football: Nation, City and the Dream. Playing the Game for Russia, Money and PowerJim RiordanTaylor and Francis LtdFSAS_A_243966.sgm10.1080/14660970701440840Soccer and Society1466-0970 (print)/1743-9590 (online)Original Article2007Taylor & Francis840000002007Dr JimRiordanjim@riordanj.freeserve.co.uk

Developments in post-Soviet football have to be seen against the cataclysmic socio-politicalchanges that have occurred since the demise of communism and the USSR in 1991. Footballhas acquired a new and unique meaning for ordinary people in terms of both nationhoodand even ‘apolitical’ dreams. Russian football today is in the hands of multi-billionaire‘oligarchs’ who use the sport mainly as a gloss over their less sporting activities and to laun-der their vast wealth. As a result, the Russians are coming in world football, TsSKA’svictory in the UEFA Cup being just the first swallow of the Russian summer. Equally, theconsequences of oligarch control could well cause huge upheaval throughout world football,especially Britain.

Introduction

Developments in post-Soviet football have to be seen against the cataclysmic socio-

political changes that have occurred since the demise of communism and the USSR

in 1991. One of the major legacies of the communist period of Russian history

(1917–91) is fragmented governments that have provided a context for the consoli-

dation of elites in nearly all the erstwhile USSR. The former Soviet Union disinte-

grated in 1991 into 15 independent states within some of which civil wars currently

rage for further secession – for example, Chechnya in Russia or Ossetia in Georgia.

This unstable and transient situation signifies ‘progress’ not to democracy, but to

neo-authoritarian states in which corruption reigns, opposition is suppressed and the

media are muzzled.

Immediately after the demise of the Union in 1991, Russia underwent a brief period

of euphoria and illusory ‘freedom’ before what has variously been dubbed ‘violent

entrepreneurship’ (Volkov), ‘political capitalism’ (Staniszkis) and ‘post-socialist clan

Jim Riordan, Visiting Professor in Sports Studies, University of Worcester, UK. Correspondence to: jim@riordanj.

freeserve.co.uk.

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546 J. Riordan

capitalism’ (Kosals) took over.[1] Mostly one-time bureaucrats and black marketers

filled the market vacuum left by defunct state enterprises. With President Yeltsin’s

blessing, they bought up Russia’s key strategic assets – its natural resources such as oil,

gas and metals – at low prices. This was commonly known as ‘post-communist klep-

tocracy’ or ‘piratisation’.

After a series of gang wars to reduce the ranks, establish ‘turf’ boundaries, financial

control and domination of essential industries, the survivors made a truce and sought

quasi respectability within the law (1999 onward). As the British observer Tristram

Hunt comments, ‘What was billed as free market economics was in fact a quick-fire sale

of a nation’s wealth to a handful of well-positioned state apparatchiks. Gas, oil and

minerals were flogged off at rock-bottom prices to Kremlin cronies.’[2]

When Vladimir Putin took over as Russian President in 1999, some of the ‘violent

entrepreneurs’ reconstituted themselves into ‘legal’ oligarchs operating within bounds

set by the regime. The oligarchs are those tolerated and supported by the Russian

President who operates not exactly as a ‘godfather’, more as a neo-authoritarian dicta-

tor.[3] As long as the oligarchs do not threaten his power, they may coexist with the

regime. If, on the other hand, they overstep the mark (like Boris Berezovsky, wanted

for fraud and murder, and once a business partner of Abramovich, now based in

Britain) they have to seek political asylum abroad. If they remain and challenge the

President’s power, as Yukos chief and oil billionaire Khodorkovsky did, they can find

themselves in a Siberian labour camp (for nine years in Khodorkovsky’s case – on

fraud and tax evasion charges). From his cell Khodorkovsky has written, ‘Corruption

among self-serving bureaucrats has led to a pathological alienation between the elite

and the people’. He compares the Kremlin to Soviet apparatchiks trying to convince

Brezhnev that his windowless, rusty train is moving by shaking it about on the

spot.[4]

President Putin’s aim is state capitalism, whereby ‘Kremlin Inc.’, as it is known,

becomes the biggest shareholder in the newly-privatised society. Besides being fabu-

lously wealthy chiefs of state firms, the oligarchs in Russia therefore also act as

servants of the Kremlin and have to toe the political line, helping to ensure state

control of the media and total commercialization of the welfare state, as recom-

mended by the World Bank (which pays part of the salaries of ‘research staff’ in

several Russian ministries). At the same time as Russia currently has 27 billionaires

and hundreds of millionaires, it also has 50 million people, 20 per cent, living below

the poverty line of £43 a month. Some billionaire oligarchs see football as a veil/

shroud to cover their less sporting activities, as well as a means to launder their vast

wealth.

Role of Football for Ordinary People

Football is not simply a plaything of the unimaginably rich oligarchs; it plays a role

among the public of considerable social significance. In a society of cataclysmic

change and authoritarian dictatorship, football has acquired a unique meaning for

ordinary people in terms of both nationhood and even ‘apolitical’ dreams. The late

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Soccer & Society 547

Nikolai Starostin, one-time Soviet football captain and Stalin gulag victim, came close

to explaining this role in Soviet times when he talked of football in the 1920s and

1930s:

I think that the pre-war social role and significance of football grew out of the specialrelationship the public had with it. People seemed to separate it from all that wasgoing on around them. It was like the utterly unreasoned worship by sinners desper-ate to seek oblivion in their blind appeal to divinity. For most people football was theonly, and sometimes the very last, chance and hope of retaining in their souls a tinyisland of sincere feelings and human relations.[5]

This is a perceptive comment on the role of sport under a totalitarian regime, and

applies to football fans in all such countries, whether it be Nazi Germany, Fascist

Italy, Falangist Spain, Salazar’s Portugal or any of the one-time or current commu-

nist states.[6] The marriage of football and nation has special significance for

Russians who, in the last 15 years, have moved from being Soviet citizens in a multi-

ethnic state to Russian citizens in ‘Mother Rus’. This is not a reversion to pre-1917

because under the tsars Russia was an inland empire that embraced over a hundred

different nationalities. Now, for the first time, Russians have a country to themselves,

stretching half the way round the world to the Sea of Japan in the east, the Arctic

Ocean in the north and the mountains in the south that separate the country from

China and Mongolia. In such a vast land, Russians make up some 80 per cent of the

population. The role of football in forging a new nationhood will be commented on

below.

Soviet Football

In 1985, Party chief Mikhail Gorbachov had the task of saving a political system whose

centre was experiencing dissolution, inevitably strengthening the centrifugal forces and

making the system’s break-up inevitable – and with it the last remaining major world

empire (the old Russian empire, with the major exceptions of Poland and Finland,

came under the rubric of the USSR after the 1917 revolution).

It was particularly in the field of sport, more swiftly than anywhere else – perhaps

because of its popular nature – that the new era of openness (glasnost) exposed to

public scrutiny the realities of the old totalitarian regime. Victims of repression

began to publish their memoirs. Not just any old victims, but former football stars

whom the public had idolised. To take just one example, Nikolai Starostin had

captained his country at both football and ice hockey, was a founding member of the

Spartak Sports Society in the late 1930s, and managed the Soviet national football

team. He also spent ten years in Stalin’s labour camps (1944–54). He only returned

to Moscow following the death of Stalin in 1953. In his memoirs, published in the

late 1980s, he revealed his punishment for playing abroad (against communist

worker teams, like l’Etoile rouge in Paris). The xenophobic charge read: ‘Nikolai

Petrovich Starostin publicly praised bourgeois sport and tried to instil into our sport

the mores of the capitalist world.’[7] His real crime was captaining the Spartak team

that had the temerity to beat Moscow Dinamo in the league and cup in 1938 and

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548 J. Riordan

1939, so incurring the wrath of the Dinamo President and brutal secret police chief,

Lavrenty Beria.

In a way, Nikolai (and his three brothers, also Spartak players sent to camps beyond

the Arctic Circle) was lucky. Attempts to purge Soviet sport of foreign influence

resulted in a crime unprecedented in history. No one knows the precise number of

victims; but the Stalin-enforced Terror carried off five sports ministers, heads of the

major sports colleges, eminent sports scientists and medics, and probably thousands of

leading sportspeople.[8]

Repression was not the only dark corner to have light shed on it during the

Gorbachov era. Another was the extraordinary length to which the authorities had

gone to ensure victory over capitalist states. As the immediate post-war Chairman of

the Committee on Physical Culture and Sport, Nikolai Romanov, revealed in his

memoirs, published in 1987, ‘Once we decided to take part in foreign competitions, we

were forced to guarantee victory, otherwise the “free” bourgeois press would fling mud

at the entire nation, as well as our athletes … To gain permission to go to international

tournaments I had to send a special note to Stalin ensuring victory.’[9]

While the Soviet Union dominated the summer and winter Olympic Games from its

Helsinki debut in 1952 (as well as some non-Olympic sports, like chess), however, it

never seriously challenged the world’s leading football teams. Despite the amazing

performance of Moscow Dinamo in its four-match unbeaten tour of Britain in 1945

(two wins, two draws against Arsenal, Chelsea, Cardiff and Glasgow Rangers), Soviet

football failed to gain a place among the world’s leading nations or clubs. The same

could be said of professional basketball, though not ice hockey where the top Soviet

teams took on and beat the leading NHL clubs in the 1980s.

During the 1980s, radical changes began to appear in Soviet sport, breaking the

mould of its functionalized and bureaucratic (plan-fulfilment) structure. Until then,

not only had the state-controlled system hampered a true appraisal of realities that lay

beneath the ‘universal’ statistics and ‘idealised’ veneer, it had prevented concessions to

particular groups in the population – the ‘we know what’s best for you’ syndrome,

where the fit tell the disabled that sport is not for them; men tell women what sports

they should play (not football since it gives women ‘varicose veins, interferes with their

sexual functions and causes unhealthy excitement among men’).[10] Further, the

political leaders, mindful of international prestige (for both the country and socialism

generally), decided that competitive Olympic sports were the only civilised forms of

culture.

What no one could say openly before the late 1980s, owing to strict censorship, was

that much of the institutionalized sports structure was based on a lie. For example,

sports men and women with Master of Sport ranking and above devoted themselves

full time to sport and were paid accordingly (thereby violating Olympic ‘amateur’

regulations); the Soviet state manufactured, tested and administered performance-

enhancing drugs to its athletes; Dinamo was the sports club financed and sponsored

by the security forces (its players having officer sinecures, a military ranking and even

a uniform). Being based on ubiquitous security police headquarters, Dinamo had its

sports clubs in all the major Soviet and East European cities (such as Dinamo Kiev,

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Minsk and Tbilisi within the USSR, as well as within the ‘socialist camp’, such as

Dinamo Tirana in Albania, Dinamo Berlin in East Germany, Dinamo Zagreb in

Yugoslavia). The other major sports club based on military garrisons was for the army

– SKA (Army Sports Club), with TsSKA (Central Army Sports Club) the metropoli-

tan club based in Moscow.

The remaining sports societies and football clubs were based on trade unions, such

as Lokomotiv – railways, Spartak – white collar workers, Yunost – students, Urozhai –

farmers, and on large factories, such as Torpedo – Moscow car works, Zenit – Leningrad

electricity company. All the major sports societies had football clubs in the premier

Soviet league.[11]

Once the curtain came down on communism – in 1989 in Eastern and Central

Europe, 1991 in the Soviet Union – socialism gave way to capitalism, so that the free

trade union sports societies (such as Spartak, representing white collar workers; and

Lokomotiv for railway employees), as well as Dinamo and armed forces clubs, mostly

disappeared in favour of private sports, health and recreation clubs; women’s wrestling

and boxing extracted more profit than women’s chess and volleyball (just as former

ballet dancers found they could earn more money in foreign or domestic strip bars and

brothels). The various nationalities – Ukrainians, Armenians, Latvians, Moldovans,

etc. – preferred their own independent teams to combined effort and success. So Kiev

Dinamo opted to compete in a Ukrainian league, Tbilisi Dinamo in a Georgian league,

and Russian clubs in the Russian Football League set up in 1991. However nonsensical

this might seem for smaller nationalities, denying themselves top-class opposition

and profitable match attendance figures, it matched the liberation mood of the post-

communist times.

The failed communist coup of 19–21 August 1991 accelerated the shift from state

control of, and support for, sport towards private, commercial sport, and a massive

‘brain’ and ‘muscle’ drain of top athletes, coaches, sports medics and scientists to the

richest overseas ‘buyer’. The international market for sports talent enabled stars from

one-time communist states to offer themselves for sale to promoters from around the

world. Basketball and ice hockey players and coaches found a home in Canada and the

USA, football stars and cyclists in Europe, boxers and weightlifters in Japan and

Turkey. Others, as in tennis and athletics, became international entrepreneurs attached

to top, mainly US, coaches/agents, virtually stateless and part of a world jet-setting

circuit.

By 1995, more than 300 football, 700 ice hockey and 100 Russian basketball play-

ers were plying their trade in North America, Asia and Western Europe.[12] As in

Latin America and Africa, post-Soviet domestic clubs and leagues rapidly became

‘farm teams’ for capitalist sport.[13] This new and much-resented subordinate status

made it difficult for Russians (and other east Europeans) to assemble players for

international games, collect transfer fees, and get their clubs into lucrative European

tournaments.[14]

All these developments weakened Russian interest in the Olympic movement and

led to the removal of sinecures of an army commission and ‘eternal’ studenthood for

all top players, and to the dismantling of the 42 boarding schools and sports clubs and

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550 J. Riordan

societies.[15] The Army Sports Society held out under the Russian Defence Ministry

until 1997 when it became a joint stock company, with the ministry retaining a control-

ling stake.

During the Gorbachov era, up to 1991, there had arisen a multiplicity of grass roots

sports organizations covering disabled sports people, women (playing rugby as well as

football), small-scale private swimming and tennis clubs, and senior fitness associa-

tions. They were soon to be steamrollered by a ‘revolution’ as far-reaching as anything

in the past: exposure to the ‘free’ market and selling out to the global economy.

Human Migration

The uncertainty and destruction of people’s living standards that accompanied the

break-up of the Soviet Union resulted in two disastrous consequences. The first was

that life expectancy drastically fell, especially for Russian men – down to 58 years today,

lower than in Bangladesh and six years less than it was in 1965. The second was

that from a Soviet population of nearly 300 million, in 1991 the Russian population

was 149 million. With the swiftly falling Russian birth rate, according to some esti-

mates, the Russian population could be half as much, 75 million, by the year 2050. This

has resulted in the government being forced to encourage large-scale immigration –

from 1 July 2005 – for the first time in history (initially from China and India). In some

ways, this policy has been matched in football, with the mass importation of foreign

players.

In the wake of the crumbling communist edifice, a deadly struggle began for control

of sport, especially football. Seeing the inevitable end to their political power, a number

of communist officials swiftly turned themselves into business people and, using their

influence and contacts, purchased state enterprises at very low prices (about 20 per

cent of their real market value) under the cover of privatisation. These became known

as ‘nomenklatura’ companies, such as the huge oil outfits like Sibneft (Siberian Oil),

Lukoil, Yukos and Rosneft (Russian Oil), as well as Russia’s largest company, Gazprom

(Gas Industry). They were soon joined by similar companies formed by members of

the new political elite, the embourgeoisified ‘New Russians’ (Novye russkie) or, now,

the ‘Newest Russians’ (Noveishie russkie) who are immensely wealthy, like Roman

Abramovich, the master of Sibneft and owner of Chelsea, and whose company owns

TsSKA.

People like Abramovich have brought a radical break with the past in world foot-

ball. In so doing, they are also bringing about a major shift in football’s balance of

power – from west Europeans to Russians. For the first time, the clubs they own can

buy players from all over the world, no matter what the price or wages demanded.

Money matters not a tittle in seeking success. Chelsea’s wage-bill alone in 2003–04 was

£115m, and is estimated to be some £170m in 2004–05, by far the highest in the world.

For the moment, the oligarch owners are permitted more or less free rein both by their

own government in Russia and by some (for example, British) football authorities in

the country where their clubs play. The former make no insistence that money taken

from the Russian people should be reinvested at home; the latter, along with the fans,

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Soccer & Society 551

turn a blind eye to the origins of such an evidently Fortunatus Purse, and its moral

implications.

Both sets of the new elite soon accumulated excess wealth and, wishing to put a

‘healthy gloss’ on their public image, turned to sports sponsorship. As these ostenta-

tiously rich ‘Newest Russians’ went about acquiring symbols of wealth, sport became a

convenient place to invest their money. Like the primitive capitalism that underlay

their power, the methods used to exploit football were often primitive in the extreme,

including the fixing of games, bribing of referees and even ‘hit’ killings of those who

stand in their way or try to expose their nefarious operations.

One of the rare public admissions about ‘dirty’ or ‘criminal’ money being involved

in Russian football was made by Nikolai Tolstykh on Russian State Television on

1 March 1996.[16] Tolstykh should know: he was concurrently head of the Russian

Football League and the then President of Moscow Dinamo. He freely admitted to have

threatened referees who gave ‘controversial’ decisions against his team (in one case

allegedly beating up a referee), while at the same time running the league that

controlled the careers of those who refereed the matches. Tolstykh’s assumption, like

that of many others, was that everything and everyone was up for grabs.[17] As an

aside, at the ‘derby’ match I witnessed in the Olympic (once ‘Lenin’) Stadium between

Spartak and TsSKA, on Sunday 29 May 2005, the three officials were from Germany,

for the first time in a domestic Premier match, owing to the fear of corruption of

Russian referees in such a vital encounter (notwithstanding the bribery scandal

surrounding referees in Germany!).

In regard to ‘football murders’, after Moscow’s most popular team, Spartak, had

refused repeated offers of ‘assistance’ from Moscow’s politically powerful mayor (and

alleged mafia boss), Yuri Luzhkov, in the autumn of 1997, the Club’s General Director,

Larissa Nechayeva, was assassinated at her dacha outside Moscow in what was

rumoured to be a dispute over TV rights. Five years previously, the Chornomorets

Novorossisk President Vladimir Boot was killed and his footballing son, also Vladimir,

had to seek shelter from the Russian mafia in Germany, where he played for Borussia

Dortmund. In February 2005, the TsSKA President’s son, Vadim Giner, survived an

assassination attempt when his car was shot at in Moscow. No one has ever been

convicted of any of these crimes. In neighbouring Bulgaria, the Lokomotiv Plovdiv

boss, Georgi Iliev, was killed by a sniper’s bullet in September 2005.

In modern-day Russia, it has to be remembered that, lurking behind business activ-

ity, is organized crime whose precise role is hard to specify, but is as widespread as it is

in any other sphere of business. The situation has been exacerbated by what Robert

Edelman calls ‘capitalist talent hunters of widely varying degrees of scrupulousness …

regardless of the consequences for the individuals involved or for the future of

sport’.[18] These ‘talent scouts’ are often accompanied by other ‘Big Game hunters’

from the increasingly globalized entertainment market. Their ideology was spelled out

in 1996 by Alexander Weinstein, chief of the US-based International Management

Group’s Moscow Office: ‘We think that now it’s really the right time to start a civilised

sports market here in Russia; before … it was financed by the government. Now … it’s

really the time for a big commercial structure of some kind of independent company

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552 J. Riordan

to be involved.’[19] Such developments undoubtedly leave Russians with mixed

emotions. To some participation in the global market for sports talent is seen as part

of living in a ‘normal’ and ‘civilised’ world. Yet the process of sports globalization only

goes to confirm Russia’s subordinate status in the world. This is deeply resented by

some people. Post-communist television has fostered the same kind of globalization

and homogenization (‘dumbing down’) in all forms of popular culture. Russian

nationalism is wounded by the international sports and pop culture developments

that underlie the country’s decline as a world power and emphasize its subordinate

place in the global sports market. No wonder some of the older generation harks back

to the ‘good old days’ of educational and cultured Soviet entertainment. Among

young people, however, contemporary films, TV, radio, music and video games,

largely but not entirely foreign, seem more popular than a great deal of Soviet fare

ever was.

Despite the exodus of talent, the Russian public has often maintained an interest in

their Russian idols who have left the country. This is facilitated by games shown live on

TV and a wide variety of round-up and highlight shows pre-packaged by international

distributors. As an example, every match played by the English 2004–05 Premiership

Champions, Chelsea (or ‘Chelski’ as it is popularly known by surrogate fans), is shown

on Russian television. Besides owning Chelsea, Abramovich’s company also controls

TsSKA, whose shirts advertise the Sibneft logo. Some Russian viewers perceive Chelsea

as ‘theirs’ because its success has been bought by a Russian, who has also cashed in on

merchandising Chelsea memorabilia throughout Russia. However, it was TsSKA, not

Chelsea, that won the EUFA Cup in 2005, beating Sporting Lisbon on the Portuguese

club’s home ground. Significantly, TsSKA was the first Russian team since Moscow

Dinamo in 1972 to reach a European final. Inevitably, this Russian success has attracted

other oligarchs to try to buy success in their striving for international security and

credit for their business. Soviet teams never attained the pinnacle of football success in

the World Cup. Nonetheless, they did provide Olympic and European finalists, as well

as a number of outstanding players, like Yashin, Netto, Ivanov, Streltsov, Blokhin,

Voronin and Dassayev, who became international greats.

Domestic Football Attendance

All the same, as elsewhere in the world, the sporting Diaspora has stimulated among

Russians the same kind of nationalistic ire against such multinational juggernauts based

mainly in the USA. It has also had the effect of forcing football fans to turn away from

following the game altogether. Football is the most popular spectator sport during

Russia’s summer months (ice hockey is the winter spectator sport). Some 30 years ago,

in Soviet times, the major grounds were packed to capacity, with an average of 35,000

fans at Premiership matches. Today, the six major Moscow teams (Spartak, TsSKA,

Dinamo, Lokomotiv, Torpedo and the recently-formed Moskva) average just over

7,000 fans a game between them – a pitiful figure by any European comparison.

Lokomotiv was the best-supported club in the 2004 season with an average attendance

of 11,240, with TsSKA second with 10,800.[20]

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This dire situation signifies that those clubs without oligarch sponsorship are fast

heading for insolvency, like the capital’s Premier teams Torpedo and Moskva. Several

provincial teams are in danger of dropping out of the Premier League and folding

altogether, such as Samara’s Wings of the Soviets (Krylya sovetov – the erstwhile

Soviet Air Force team) which, after only six games of the 2005 season, had to sell its

three best players in order to survive. Despite having the Deputy Prime Minister,

Kadyrov, as President, and an annual budget of £16m, the Chechen team Terek

attracts a top gate of only 7,500 and is propped up by pro-Russian sponsors for

political reasons – the President supporting Russia in the genocidal war in Chechnya;

success makes good political capital.[21] One effect of this metropolitan gravitation is

that today Moscow clubs comprise seven of the 16 Premier League teams – the

world’s highest concentration of soccer clubs in the capital city. This will increase to

eight – half of the Premiership – if the 2005 Cup Finalist Khimki gains promotion

this season.

One reason for the decline in attendance is lack of nationalistic interest in games

against other Russian teams, rather than teams from other ethnic regions. There was

always added ‘spice’ to watching a Moscow Russian team take on the Georgians or test

their metal against the top Soviet team, Dinamo Kiev, from the Ukraine. Another

reason for drastically falling attendances is that, today, many young people have access

to computers, cars and other leisure facilities that were unavailable in Soviet times

(computers, after all, were dangerous weapons in the wrong hands). But there is yet

another reason, as Vladimir Rodionov, General Secretary of the Russian Football

Federation, explains, ‘People can watch three or four live Russian games on TV every

week. And they can watch English, Spanish, Italian and German football, all live. So

why spend money to go to the ground when it’s cheaper and more enjoyable to sit at

home or in a bar with a beer?’[22]

Money is certainly a problem for many fans. What is visible to westerners is the apex

of the new Russian pyramid: the fabulously wealthy oligarchs. What they don’t see is

the wide-scale poverty and destitution. The Canadian economist, J. McMurtry, has

observed that post-Soviet market capitalism ‘has been far more destructive of people’s

daily and long-term security and well-being than any Communist Party policy since

the Second World War’.[23] The fact is that many football fans just cannot afford to go

to watch football. Rodionov, ever the diplomat (as one might expect of a long-serving

civil servant), echoes President Putin’s optimism that all will be well once the economy

improves:

They just say let the Russian economy grow, let the Russian people become rich andthen they will be able to afford to go to the stadium. So we need to fix our economyso that people can watch football again. That’s what they say. This is Russiatoday.[24]

Migration of Money and Big Business

The cumulative impact of the ‘free’ market on post-Soviet football had resulted in little

initial success for Russian teams in international competition. The latter part of the

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554 J. Riordan

1990s and early 2000s witnessed some spectacular failures. Russia’s performance at

the 1994, 1998 and 2002 World Cup was, to say the least, mediocre (failing to make the

finals of the 1998 and 2002 tournaments). In Soviet times there was undeniably a differ-

ent attitude by players (who, in any case, were banned from playing for non-Soviet

teams). Rodionov again, harking back to ‘the good old days’: ‘We were proud, we were

patriotic, we played for love of our sport and our country. Now it’s all about money. It

affects everything.’[25]

The American Robert Edelman, who wrote an extremely perceptive book about

football and its fans during the Soviet period,[26] makes a similar point in regard to

spectators: ‘Soviet citizens created an arena of popular culture that was human and

genuine, spontaneous and playful. In the vortex of globalised sport, that difference has

been lost.’[27] While some fans might look to the national team as representing a new

Russian nationhood, the players often regard themselves, as one recently told me, as

‘gypsies’ who roam the world looking for a hook on which to hang their boots. One

year Bordeaux, the next Portsmouth, then Chelsea, then Charlton. ‘God knows where

I’ll be in two months time.’[28]

As top Russian players are for the moment moving westwards, another migration is

occurring which the football world is only just waking up to. Leading European and

South American players, whom the Russians dub ‘legionnaires’, are heading eastwards

at an ever-increasing rate. In the 2005 season, the Russian Premiership had an aston-

ishing average of 11–12 foreign players on the books of each club – more than any

English, French, German, Spanish or Italian clubs.[29] Moscow Dinamo is even

contemplating the appointment of the first-ever west European coach; the Portuguese

Vitor Pontes and Antonio Oliveira are two names mentioned in the Russian press.[30]

Already Dinamo has a core (nine in mid-2005) of Portuguese-speaking players,

including Tiago, Derlei, Cicero, Maniche and Costinha – the latter pair being

purchased in early May 2005 for between £15 and £16 million. Dinamo President,

Alexei Fedorychev, favours a single culture and language that help knit the team

together. What entices the players to Moscow is that ‘our wages are much higher than

the players could expect in Portugal’.[31] No work permit problems stand in the way

in so far as Fedorychev’s co-President is Yuri Zavarzin, coincidentally President of the

Russian Premier League.

TsSKA, with whom Abramovich’s company Sibneft signed a £29 million three-year

sponsorship deal in 2004, beat off competition from a host of European clubs to sign

Vagner Love, one of the most highly-rated young Brazilian strikers, for £5.5 million,

while Croatia international striker Ivica Olic opted to join the Club instead of moving

to western Europe. Signing players is one thing, keeping them, however, is another.

After one season, Vagner Love tried to leave, complaining of the winter cold; he called

a press conference to announce that he was joining Corinthians. But a few ‘sweeteners’

and contractual regulations persuaded him to stay and play a crucial part in TsSKA’s

European triumph.

The current (mid-2005) most successful team is the once unfashionable railway

trade union club Lokomotiv, presently sponsored by the Russian state railways, a vast

network of 1.2m employees headed by Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov.

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Lokomotiv differs in ownership from other Moscow clubs in having direct state, rather

than oligarch, control.

It was when Lukoil-sponsored Moscow Spartak signed up arguably the hottest talent

in Argentine football, Fernando Cavenaghi, for £8 million that southern European

clubs especially began to worry. Young South American stars had previously been

hand-picked by clubs in Spain, Portugal and Italy; now they were being outbid by the

nouveau riche of European football.

The importation of foreign stars is not confined to big-time football. In a recent

indoor six-a-side Russian League match that I witnessed in late May 2005, four of the

Moscow Spartak side were Brazilians. As with Abramovich’s Chelsea, money seems no

object. Dinamo President Alexei Fedorychev admits to investing some £40 million in

the Club, though he claims it needs a cushion of around £70–80 million. A former

Dinamo player, he acquired 51 per cent of Dinamo shares in September 2004, having

made his fortune in agrochemicals. His company, Fedcominvest, is registered in

Monaco where Fedorychev lives. In 2002, his attempt to buy the Monaco club, which

was facing bankruptcy, was blocked because of allegations of money-laundering and

criminal connections. Like Abramovich, however, he now owns one club and sponsors

another – the Fedcominvest logo now embellishes the Monaco shirt.

Fedorychev is to build a new stadium in Petrovsky Park over the next 18 months

(Dinamo Stadium – initially called the Stalin Stadium – was the first big football

stadium constructed in Moscow, in the 1930s; the Lenin Stadium was not built until

1956).[32] Fedorychev admits that at the moment Russian clubs are unprofitable, with

attendance receipts, sales of merchandise and TV money being insufficient for them to

break even. It may not come as a surprise in the intricate and incestuous business

of Russian football that Fedorychev also owns the TV rights for the entire Premier

League.

Oligarchs, Player Trading and Take-overs

A new direction in Russian involvement in world football has been evolving, tenta-

tively and covertly, over recent years. It includes more attempted take-overs of debt-

ridden western clubs, from Holland’s Feyenoord and Spain’s Deportivo la Coruna to

Brazil’s Corinthians. Media Sport Investment (the owner of Brazil’s Corinthians and

reported to be a front organization of Berezovsky) has been negotiating – so far

without success – for the purchase of the London Champions League club, West Ham.

More successful has been the purchase for £4m of the Scottish club Heart of

Midlothian by Vladimir Romanov, owner of the Ukio bank based in Lithuania’s capital

Vilnius. His high-handed manner in hiring (he made his inexperienced son Roman

chairman) and firing has caused much alarm. But he achieved his declared aim of

transferring his bank to a major European financial centre (Edinburgh) to improve its

credit rating.

The new trend also signals, more sinisterly, a business operation of buying and sell-

ing shares in player transfer values, a sort of market speculation in ‘player futures’.

Like many devious business dealings worldwide, it is hard to pin down, to expose the

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power behind the front men and companies. All that can be assembled are scattered

pieces of the jigsaw that evidently form the vague facial contours of Abramovic and

Berezovsky.

In January 2004, Jorien van den Herik (Herik), President of Feyenoord, announced

that he had rejected a Russian bid to take a major stake in the club. ‘We could have had

a major cash injection’, he said, ‘but as long as I am in charge, we are not selling the

name, culture and identity of this club to a Russian tycoon’.[33] A few days later,

Augusto Lendoiro (Lendoiro), President of the Spanish club, Deportivo la Coruna,

revealed that there had been Russian interest in acquiring shares in the club: ‘They

have called us from Russia and England … I don’t know if it is Abramovich, but

it could be people close to him’.[34] Later, that November, the top Brazilian club,

Corinthians, was taken over by a mysterious businessman, Kia Joorabchian, fronting a

company called Media Sport Investment. MSI paid off the club’s debts with $20m and

signed a ‘partnership deal’ that pledged a minimum of $35m, while taking 51 per cent

of the profits. It then purchased South American ‘player of the year’, Carlos Tevez,

from the Argentine club Boca Juniors for around $22m – four times more than had

ever been paid in transfer fees in Brazil. Subsequently, it then bought Carlos Alberto of

FC Porto.

What was MSI and who was Kia Joorabchian? It transpired that Media Sport

Investment had been formed only three months before, in August, possessed no capi-

tal of its own, but was able to call on funds from companies registered in the British

Virgin Isles. As to Joorabchian, it did not take journalists in Buenos Aires and Sao

Paulo long to uncover the Russian connection. Back in 1999, he had acted as front

man for Boris Berezovsky in purchasing Russia’s influential commercial newspaper

Kommersant. The Partido Popular Socialista, which runs the Sao Paulo City Council,

set up an enquiry that concluded that, ‘There is sufficient evidence to demonstrate

that the Corinthians-MSI partnership is being used for the purposes of money-

laundering’.[35] The investigators identified Boris Berezovsky as a probable source of

funds, and indicated another tycoon, the Georgian Patarkatsishvili, as another source.

The latter had been partner of Berezovsky before he had been forced to leave Moscow

and head for his home city of Tbilisi in Georgia, where his interests range from oil to

casinos; he financed Georgia’s athletes at the Athens Olympics, paid $100,000 to each

of their two gold-medallists, and owns Dinamo Tbilisi. Significantly, a player

exchange took place after the Corinthians take-over, with three Brazilians going to

Georgia, and four young Georgian players heading for Sao Paulo.

Although, in February 2005, Joorabchian was expelled from Brazil and banned from

doing company business there, the Corinthians President, Alberto Dualib admitted to

several contacts with both Berezovsky and Patarkatsishvili, and announced that

Berezovsky was taking part in a $50m plan to rebuild the Corinthians stadium.[36]

MSI’s strategy seems to include buying players’ contracts, or a portion of the contracts,

and selling them on to the highest bidder. The two Argentine stars bought by MSI,

Tevez and Mascherano, were sold on to West Ham United which Joorabchian was

negotiating to purchase in late 2005. Of the other River Plate players said to have been

purchased by MSI, one is now at Barcelona and the other is bound for Porto.

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It is the case of Nuno Assis that best illustrates the MSI approach. Assis, one of

Portugal’s skilful midfielders, moved from Vitoria Guimaraes to Benfica in January

2005 – on the surface a routine transfer between two Portuguese clubs. However, the

600,000 Euro transfer fee was paid by MSI – which then passed his playing registration

to Dinamo Moscow; in turn Dinamo sent Assis on loan to Benfica. The agent behind

the deal was Jorge Mendes, managing director of Gestifute, the company involved in

almost every major Portuguese transfer in recent years (including Mourinho’s move as

coach to Chelsea). In addition to earning the normal percentage from player transfers

(Ronaldo, Postiga, Viana, etc.), it makes money from buying and selling shares in a

player’s transfer values.

While Gestifute and MSI are separate entities, the close working relationship

between them suggests that this may well be the model for MSI operations, with

wealthy Russians putting up the money for speculation on ‘player futures’. This could

signal a dramatic shift in the traditional transfer market, with radically new forces

entering the game. According to David Shonfield:

MSI definitely has Russian/Georgian backers – four or five, plus one English and oneSpanish, according to Andres Sanches, Corinthians’ Vice-President – and is alreadya force in the transfer market. Gestifute has done business with MSI and enjoys a rela-tionship of trust with both Chelsea and Dinamo Moscow. It is also inconceivable thatAbramovich and his advisers are not closely monitoring the football investments ofother Russian businessmen.[37]

The Russian oligarchs are men with huge personal wealth who are adept at betting

on futures. In this particular case, it is the future value of football talent. Where the

funds come from to finance Russian football and the tentacular Russian reach round

the world is a well-kept secret. Russian clubs and their investors are unwilling to reveal

their financial accounts and the law does not oblige them to do so. What also makes

them attractive to investors/money-launderers is that they pay less tax than other busi-

nesses and experience less government control. No one will admit openly to having

links with the mafia and laundering money through transfers.

In Russia the oligarchs are widely loathed. As Nikon Alexeyevich, head of Polity

Foundation in Moscow, writes, ‘The vast majority of Russians believe the oligarchs

stole those assets. There is huge resentment of them and the terribly unequal soci-

ety we now have as a result.’[38] What attracts the oligarchs to Britain in particular

is a variety of inducements. Hunt says it includes ‘a witch’s brew of favourable tax

planning, the financial services sector, and a stable of corporate law firms for the

endless litigation that pursues them. They also like the history and heritage of

Britain along with high society’s no-questions-asked approach to fabulous new

money.’[39]

So why do the British government, the Football Association and fans offer an

offshore haven for the ill-gotten gains of those who have plundered Russia’s wealth?

Abramovich’s lawyer and Chelsea Chairman, Bruce Buck, frankly admits ‘It’s difficult

to buy European clubs as lots are community-owned. But here we have a proper corpo-

rate structure.’[40] Translated, that means British clubs are not mutual or membership

clubs, but limited companies and plcs, many in the financial mire.

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In his essay in this journal, Stephen Wagg explains the ambivalent attitude of

Chelsea fans to Abramovich as follows, ‘the conventional discourse of reportage

depoliticises Abramovich … In the story of Chelsea … it is Jose Mourinho who is the

producer and Abramovich is styled primarily as a consumer … he is just like us: a

supporter who loves his football and wants to help the team and enjoy their success.’

Adam Brown in his essay, however, tells a different story in regard to the take-over by

the US millionaire Malcolm Glazer of Manchester United: ‘fans were forced to sell

their shares, leaving the club entirely in the hands of a businessman who had no

previous involvement in or knowledge of Manchester United’. While the Russian

Abramovich is generally accepted by Chelsea fans, the American Glazer does not

share such fan acclaim.

Such buying of success for one club does not have to be the case. In the USA, the NFL

(American Football League) tries to achieve a ‘competitive balance’ that is vital to the

sport’s success; it therefore shares round the revenue among the franchises. In Britain,

on the other hand, Roman Abramovich can pour in whatever he wants to transform

Chelsea into a club with a locker room of the world’s best players. And no one at the

FA or Chelsea questions his right. However, like all business, it is a precarious situation

that could change at any moment, with the oligarchs walking out of the clubs they pres-

ently sponsor, leaving behind chaos and enormous debts. Football, after all, is not

exactly their game.

Notes

[1] See Volkov, Violent Entrepreneurs; Staniszkis, Post-Communism; Kosals and Ryvkina,

Sotsiologiya perekhoda k rynku v Rossii.[2] T. Hunt, ‘Why do we welcome these robber barons to Britain?’ Guardian, 25 October 2005, 32.

[3] See Lane, The Legacy of State Socialism and the Future of Transformation.

[4] Khodorkovsky, ‘Reform programme “Left Turn 2”’, cited in Kommersant and The Guardian.

Also see ‘Prisoner Khodorkovsky unveils his grand plan’, Guardian, 12 November 2005, 21.

[5] Starostin, Futbol skvoz gody, 83.

[6] See Arnaud and Riordan, Sport and International Politics; Aja, Sport y Autoritarismos (Sport

and Authoritarianism); Riordan, ‘Sport under Fascism and Communism’, 11–17.

[7] Starostin, Futbol skvoz gody, 73.

[8] For full details, see Riordan, ‘The Strange Story of Nikolai Starostin, Football and Lavrenty

Beria’, 681, 689.

[9] Romanov, Trudnye dorogi k Olimpu (Difficult Paths to Olympus), 57.

[10] Teoriya i praktika fizicheskoi kultury (The Theory and Practice of Physical Culture), 1973,

no.10, 62.

[11] For a fuller description of the Soviet sports system, see Riordan, Sport in Soviet Society.

[12] Sportexpress (Moscow), 27 December 1995.

[13] Sportexpress , 8 February 1996.

[14] Komsomolskaya Pravda, 17 March 1992; 8 April 1992; 30 May 1992.

[15] See Riordan and Cantelon, ‘The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe’, 101.

[16] Tolstykh, interview on Russian State Television ORT, 1 March 1996. See also Volkov, ViolentEntrepreneurs.

[17] Edelman, ‘There are no rules on planet Russia’, 226.

[18] Ibid., 222.

[19] Weinstein, interview with US cable sports network, ESPN, Moscow, 26 June 1996.

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[20] Futbol, no.21, 20–27 May 2005, 34.

[21] Sovetsky Sport, 20 May 2005, 8.

[22] Rodionov, quoted in G. Marcotti, ‘Russia’s flawed foreign policy’, The Times, 15 November

2004, 22 (of ‘The Game’).

[23] McMurtry, Unequal Freedoms, 208.

[24] In Marcotti, ‘Russia’s flawed foreign policy’, 23.

[25] Ibid.

[26] See Edelman, Serious Fun.

[27] Edelman, ‘There are no Rules on Planet Russia’, 238.

[28] Interview with Alexei Smertin, Moscow, 31 May 2005.

[29] Novye izvestiya (The New Izvestiya (News)), no.88, 23 May 2005, 8.

[30] Futbol, no.19, 17–23 May 2005, 6.

[31] Fedorychev, Novye izvestiya, no.88, 23 May 2005, 8.

[32] Ibid.

[33] Shonfield, ‘On Russia’. Unpublished report for the Observer newspaper, 10 June 2005, 2.

[34] Ibid.

[35] See the periodical Tribal Football.[36] Ibid.

[37] Shonfield, ‘On Russia’, 4.

[38] Quoted in Conn, ‘Hero in London, but Abramovich faces writ overseas’. Guardian,

21 September 2005.

[39] See Hunt, Guardian, 25 October 2005.

[40] Buck, quoted in Conn, Guardian, 9 November 2005, 36.

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