FC “Tom” loses its professional status: the team is expelled from the RFU

In 2010, a huge poster hung at the Trud stadium in Tomsk. On it, Vladimir Putin, who was then Prime Minister, pointed somewhere ahead, and under it was an explanatory inscription: “There must be football in Tomsk!”

It was one of the first memes of Russian football.

In 2009, “Tom” was in a difficult financial situation. After the first round of the championship, there was a question of removing the team from the RPL tournament, however, the regional leadership, with the active support of the Minister of Sports of the Russian Federation and President of the RFU Vitaly Mutko, managed to achieve a meeting at the highest level, and the fate of Tom was decided at an official reception with the Prime Minister of Russia Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Vladimirovich uttered a phrase that has become a cult and the team has seven sponsors from among large companies operating in the Tomsk region. As it turned out later, this was the beginning of the end of the famous Siberian club.

Road to nowhere

Before the start of the 2022/2023 football season, Tom failed to obtain a license to play in the first division. She was then denied a license to play in the second division. The team’s management filed an appeal with the RFU, but lost it. And on June 27, 2022, it became finally clear that in the new season Tom would not play in official tournaments in professional status.

There was hope that the situation would change. On September 5, 2022, the head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, during a video conference with Acting Governor of the Tomsk Region Vladimir Mazur, announced Gazprom’s readiness to help Tom regain professional status. But for some reason, his desire did not find understanding among the local authorities.

As MK wrote earlier, as of November 26, 2022, 1,234 people signed a petition addressed to Vladimir Putin on the change.org channel in support of FC Tom. Which said the following; “In Tomsk, the liquidation of the Tomsk football club and its Academy begins, where about 400 talented Tomsk children aged 6 to 17 are involved! Or rather, the slow murder of the most famous football club in Siberia is being completed.

The authors of the appeal to the head of state pointed out that the new governor did not resolve the issue of sponsors and did not even meet with the management of Gazpromneft, who confirmed that they were ready to talk about continuing sponsorship.

On January 10, 2023, General Director Tatyana Aleksandrovna Smirnova left Tom. As stated in a piercing message in the club’s official telegram channel, “the authorities of the region tried to keep Tatyana Alexandrovna in her post, but none of her requests (and the very first one was to provide financial support for at least partial repayment of wage arrears to club employees and coaches Academy) was not implemented. The salary debt is already 5 months. People have nothing to live on, nothing to feed their families. All the words and repeated public assurances of the region’s leaders that the club’s Academy will be fully preserved, where 400 children from 6 to 17 years old are involved, that the problems of FC Tom will be solved – all this remains just promises.

It is noteworthy that on the same day, statements about FC Tom were published on the RIA Novosti website by deputy. Governor – Head of the Regional Department of Finance Alexander Fedenev. Who said that only the maintenance of the academy requires about 500 million rubles a year.

In response, the same official telegram channel “Tom” asked Fedenev not to mislead all Tomsk residents, creating the wrong opinion.

“The entire budget of the club for the whole of 2022 amounted to about 200 million. For the maintenance of the Academy in 2023 (together with the youth team), the club announced the amount of 35 million rubles.

FC “Tom” is an enterprise of regional subordination, the only founder is the Administration of the region. “Tom” is not a business project, but a significant social project.

The academy trains 400 talented Tomsk boys and girls from 6 to 17 years old who have a football dream. Youth “Tom”, which played for the championship of the LFC, consists entirely of students of the Academy, and in the main “Tom”, which defended the honor of the Tomsk region in the national championship for 65 years, last season there were 10 students of Tomsk football.

Now the region does not have a single team in the most popular game sports, while neighboring regions have 5-6 clubs in the country’s championships in different game sports. Moreover, a significant part of them is subsidized from the budget. But, apparently, they have a different attitude towards state policy aimed at the development of physical culture, sports and a healthy lifestyle.”

last point

Everything that happened with football in Tomsk was gradually coming to a logical end. More like collapse.

On January 18, it became known that the new general director of the club would be Vitaly Solovyov, who joined the team 45 years ago as a young football player, and then for many years worked in the management of the club in various positions. The main task of the new leader was to be the payment of the accumulated debt to the club’s employees and the subsequent drastic staff reduction and ensuring the normal “functioning of the infrastructure” – the academy, the Trud and Temp stadiums and the training base in Kaltai.

But a minute later, in the same telegram channel and in the official Tom group on VKontakte, a new message appeared that “there will be no professional team this year, the club is losing its status, being excluded from the RFU. Loses its status and Academy “Tom”. They will try to employ children’s coaches in other football schools – as well as the children themselves, pupils of the Academy. The FC Tom project, which served Tomsk and the region for 65 years, is coming to an end.

Only sports infrastructure facilities remained under the jurisdiction of the legal entity FC Tom, the fate of which will be decided further. One of the possible options for their use in the coming years (the stadiums have the appropriate licenses) is the Youth Football League of Russia, the LFC championship, the youth finals of Siberia and other tournaments. But not with the Tom team, but with other representatives of Tomsk and Tomsk football. And Tom, like many other professional teams in Russia, joined the ranks of the Heavenly Football League.

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It would seem, well, there was no more one club, so what? How many of them have perished in the vastness of our Motherland over the past 30 years. “Tom” is not the first and not the last in this sad list. And what does the author of this article care about the team. located over 3.5 thousand kilometers?

Football is not just a game. These are people, simple ordinary people with their joys and troubles. They differ from our neighbors, acquaintances, colleagues and colleagues only in that they love football more than others.

At one time, working as a press attache of the Russian Premier League, I had the honor to communicate with a wonderful person, the famous Tomsk sports journalist Oleg Igrushkin. Who, from 2001 until his death on September 11, 2018, was the permanent press attaché of Tom. Together with the team, he waited four years for promotion to the Premier League. On March 12, 2005, he celebrated the first match in the RPL against Lokomotiv, sincerely experienced all the successes and failures of the green-whites. He was one of the “patriarchs” of the press services of the RPL and FNL clubs along with Sergei Aksenov from CSKA, Maxim Syestnov from the Wings of the Soviets and Slava Ivanov from the Kuban. And when he managed to get together with his team for one reason or another, he was one of the last to leave the friendly table.

The last years of his life, Oleg was very ill, but he tried to hide it from others. This was also superimposed by the difficult financial situation at the club, when in the middle of the 2016/2017 season, salary debts alone amounted to hundreds of millions of rubles.

I remember that once at that time I called Oleg with some working question on one of the social projects of the Premier League. And suddenly I heard from him that for several months he simply did not know how to support his family. Because the employees of the club’s administration were the last to pay off their salary debts, after coaches, football players and other participants in sports activities. And this pain for his family, for his favorite team, for the death of his life’s work probably became another reason for his premature departure.

Therefore, for me, “Tom” has always been associated with his memory. And for some reason it is believed that sooner or later there will be football in Tomsk.