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Soccer & Society

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Football: Nation, City and the Dream. Playing the Game for Russia, Money and Power
Jim Riordan Available online: 14 Aug 2007

To cite this article: Jim Riordan (2007): Football: Nation, City and the Dream. Playing the Game for Russia, Money and Power, Soccer & Society, 8:4, 545-560 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14660970701440840

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Soccer & Society Vol. 8, No. 4, October 2007, pp. 545560

Football: Nation, City and the Dream. Playing the Game for Russia, Money and Power
Jim Riordan
jim@riordanj.freeserve.co.uk Dr 0 JimRiordan 4000002007 8 2007 Original Francis 1466-0970 Francis Soccer &Article Ltd 10.1080/14660970701440840 FSAS_A_243966.sgm Taylor and (print)/1743-9590 (online) Society

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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. Football has acquired a new and unique meaning for ordinary people in terms of both nationhood and 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 launder their vast wealth. As a result, the Russians are coming in world football, TsSKAs victory in the UEFA Cup being just the first swallow of the Russian summer. Equally, the consequences 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 sociopolitical 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 (191791) is fragmented governments that have provided a context for the consolidation of elites in nearly all the erstwhile USSR. The former Soviet Union disintegrated 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. ISSN 14660970 (print)/ISSN 17439590 (online) 2007 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14660970701440840

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capitalism (Kosals) took over.[1] Mostly one-time bureaucrats and black marketers filled the market vacuum left by defunct state enterprises. With President Yeltsins blessing, they bought up Russias key strategic assets its natural resources such as oil, gas and metals at low prices. This was commonly known as post-communist kleptocracy 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 nations 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 dictator.[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 Presidents power, as Yukos chief and oil billionaire Khodorkovsky did, they can find themselves in a Siberian labour camp (for nine years in Khodorkovskys 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 Putins aim is state capitalism, whereby Kremlin Inc., as it is known, becomes the biggest shareholder in the newly-privatised society. Besides being fabulously 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 recommended 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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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 special relationship the public had with it. People seemed to separate it from all that was going on around them. It was like the utterly unreasoned worship by sinners desperate to seek oblivion in their blind appeal to divinity. For most people football was the only, and sometimes the very last, chance and hope of retaining in their souls a tiny island of sincere feelings and human relations.[5]

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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, Salazars Portugal or any of the one-time or current communist 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 multiethnic 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 systems 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 Stalins labour camps (194454). 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 lEtoile 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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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 worlds 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 worlds 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 whats 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 performanceenhancing 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 metropolitan 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; womens wrestling and boxing extracted more profit than womens 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 postcommunist times. The failed communist coup of 1921 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 players 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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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 controlling 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 associations. 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 peoples 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 estimates, 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 Russias 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 football. In so doing, they are also bringing about a major shift in footballs 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. Chelseas wage-bill alone in 200304 was 115m, and is estimated to be some 170m in 200405, 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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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 ostentatiously 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. Tolstykhs 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 Moscows most popular team, Spartak, had refused repeated offers of assistance from Moscows politically powerful mayor (and alleged mafia boss), Yuri Luzhkov, in the autumn of 1997, the Clubs 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 Presidents 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 snipers bullet in September 2005. In modern-day Russia, it has to be remembered that, lurking behind business activity, 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 Groups Moscow Office: We think that now its really the right time to start a civilised sports market here in Russia; before it was financed by the government. Now its really the time for a big commercial structure of some kind of independent company

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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 Russias 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 countrys 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 200405 Premiership Champions, Chelsea (or Chelski as it is popularly known by surrogate fans), is shown on Russian television. Besides owning Chelsea, Abramovichs 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 clubs 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 Russias 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 capitals Premier teams Torpedo and Moskva. Several provincial teams are in danger of dropping out of the Premier League and folding altogether, such as Samaras 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 worlds 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 its 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 dont 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 peoples 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 Putins optimism that all will be well once the economy improves:
They just say let the Russian economy grow, let the Russian people become rich and then they will be able to afford to go to the stadium. So we need to fix our economy so that people can watch football again. Thats what they say. This is Russia today.[24]

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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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1990s and early 2000s witnessed some spectacular failures. Russias 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 different 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 its 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 Ill 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 astonishing average of 1112 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 Fedorychevs co-President is Yuri Zavarzin, coincidentally President of the Russian Premier League. TsSKA, with whom Abramovichs 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 TsSKAs 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 Abramovichs 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 7080 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, tentatively and covertly, over recent years. It includes more attempted take-overs of debtridden western clubs, from Hollands Feyenoord and Spains Deportivo la Coruna to Brazils Corinthians. Media Sport Investment (the owner of Brazils 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 Lithuanias 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 selling 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 dont 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 clubs 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 capital 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 Russias 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 moneylaundering.[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 Georgias 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] MSIs 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 Portugals 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 Mourinhos 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 players 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 one Spanish, according to Andres Sanches, Corinthians Vice-President and is already a force in the transfer market. Gestifute has done business with MSI and enjoys a relationship of trust with both Chelsea and Dinamo Moscow. It is also inconceivable that Abramovich and his advisers are not closely monitoring the football investments of other 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 businesses 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 society 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 witchs 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 societys 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 Russias wealth? Abramovichs lawyer and Chelsea Chairman, Bruce Buck, frankly admits Its difficult to buy European clubs as lots are community-owned. But here we have a proper corporate 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 sports 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 worlds 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 presently 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, 1117. [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, Violent Entrepreneurs. [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, 2027 May 2005, 34. [21] Sovetsky Sport, 20 May 2005, 8. [22] Rodionov, quoted in G. Marcotti, Russias flawed foreign policy, The Times, 15 November 2004, 22 (of The Game). [23] McMurtry, Unequal Freedoms, 208. [24] In Marcotti, Russias 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, 1723 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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Romanov, N. Trudnye dorogi k Olimpu (Hard roads to Olympus). Moscow: Fizkultura i sport, 1987. Staniszkis, J. Post-Communism: the Emerging Enigma. Warsaw: The Peoples Press, 1999. Starostin, N. Futbol skvoz gody (Football Down the Years). Moscow: Sovetskaya Rossiya, 1989. Volkov, V. Violent Entrepreneurs. The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002.

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