Showdown Looming Over Proposed Gazprom League

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Andy Shenk explores the controversies and implications of the proposed United Championship to Russian and Ukrainian football…

Gazprom chairman Aleksey Miller’s confirmation last month that a potential Russian-Ukrainian football league would feature a $1 billion prize fund, backed with a Gazprom guarantee, set the stage for a far-reaching confrontation within Russian football.

The seeds were planted months earlier, when Gazprom-owned Zenit general director Maksim Mitrofanov warned his club “might decide to not participate in the Russian championship.” His statement came after harsh sanctions were imposed on Zenit for the flare thrown at Dynamo goalie Anton Shunin during a meeting between the two clubs in mid-November.   Continue reading

The CIS League: Political Football in the Soviet Union

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Think Russia has given up on all to do with the USSR? Think again. False Nine Russian correspondent, Andy Shenk, assesses the aims and implications of a proposed CIS league gaining popular support from leading Russian clubs and courting controversy with the RFS, most of Ukraine and a certain Sepp Blatter…

FIFA President Sepp Blatter dealt potential breakaway Russian clubs and their plans for a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) football league a harsh blow on January 20: “FIFA is not interested at all in this competition… Competitions between them [clubs] take place within the framework and under the control of the national associations, within the borders of their country and association. That is the fundamental principle.” Continue reading

Match-Fixing and the Balance of Power in Russian Football

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As part of a series of articles on Russian football during the Winter break, False Nine Russian correspondent and debutant contributor, Andy Shenk, pores over the latest scandal in a saga of incidents that have brought match-fixing to the forefront of the squabbling authorities’s attention…

Russian football rumbles often with news of match-fixing, from the lowest to the highest levels. In 2009, Kryliya Sovetov lost 3-2 to Terek in Grozny in a Premier League encounter that reeked of corruption. Though neither team suffered any consequences, Leonid Slutsky, Kryliya manager at the time, commented several years later on the suspiciousness of the match: “I understood that the substance of that history was known at all levels – from Mutko [head of the Russian Football Union then] to the journalists. It’s just that no one’s yet to write the truth of the match in Grozny.” Continue reading