“Spartak” changes the alignment of faces – Newspaper Kommersant No. 139 (7340) of 08/03/2022

Moscow “Spartak” was in the spotlight because of the information about the upcoming change in the structure of ownership and management of the club in the near future. Kommersant’s sources confirm the existence of a plan according to which control over it will soon pass from Leonid Fedun, who faced difficulties due to the pandemic and Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, to the general sponsor of the team, LUKOIL: until recently, Mr. Fedun held the position in it vice president. The first person of “Spartak” in case of implementation of the plan will be one of several contenders for the position of the new head of the club’s management. Each of them has extensive experience in football.

A source familiar with the process of its development told Kommersant about the existence of a plan for a radical reorganization of the ownership and management structure of Spartak. According to him, it can be implemented in the coming weeks – until autumn. According to this plan, control over Spartak will in fact completely pass to LUKOIL, the club’s general sponsor. From him, the interlocutor of Kommersant notes, and earlier, to a large extent – “at least 30%” – the filling of the Spartak budget depended, which, according to Sport-Express, last season amounted to 11 billion rubles. The rest of the income was provided by the club’s commercial earnings and investments by its shareholders, primarily Vagit Alekperov and Leonid Fedun, who left the positions of president and vice president of LUKOIL in the spring. In 2019, Interfax estimated their effective ownership interests in Spartak at 36.7% and 32.7%. At the same time, for a long time, from the moment the transaction for the purchase of the club, which for a long time had no equal in terms of popularity in domestic football, was signed by Andrey Chervichenko in 2003, it was Mr. Fedun who remained the main “face” of the club, who determined its strategy and had all the managerial leverage.

According to a Kommersant source, the plan assumes that Leonid Fedun will part ways with the positions of president and chairman of the board of directors of Spartak.

“There will not be one person with practically unlimited powers in the club. And instead of such a structure, a more flexible one will be created, with the active participation of the entire board of directors in the club life.” The interlocutor of Kommersant noted that a “complex of factors” could lead to such a development of events. These, perhaps, include the team’s low efficiency over the past 19 years: it only once, in 2017, won the gold of the Russian championship, often suffered resounding failures in different tournaments, for example, in the previous season it collapsed in the domestic championship to tenth place, often made mistakes when choosing coaches and got into scandalous stories. But it is possible that objective circumstances had no less weight – the coronavirus pandemic and the problems that arose against the backdrop of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine and international sanctions that hit football as well. A Kommersant source suggested that because of them, it became more difficult for Leonid Fedun to fulfill his obligations to finance Spartak, and drew attention to his summer transfer campaign. So far, it turns out to be extremely modest when compared with the campaigns of some other giants: “In fact, the club, which basically got rid of expensive players, spent it as if it had decided to simply cut costs.”

Another source of Kommersant, who works in one of the structures closely associated with the Russian Premier League (RPL), said that the version about “an imminent change in the management system in Spartak” looks, in his opinion, “reliable”. He pointed out that “club management has been in limbo for quite some time now, not knowing what their fate will be at the end of August or beginning of September”.

The question of the near future of Spartak has become the most intriguing in Russian football thanks to the appearance over the weekend in a number of Telegram channels and media resources of information, predictive the departure of Leonid Fedun from key positions in the club and even the probable transfer of assets related to him to LUKOIL, for example, the Otkritie Arena, the team’s home stadium. The Spartak press service denied preparations for serious “reshuffles”. Leonid Fedun himself did not say anything about this. And his wife Zarema Salikhova, who has recently taken an active part in the affairs of the club, urged through “Sport-Express” bloggers and journalists stop harming “Spartak”, spreading “stinking hype and rumors.” She noted that at the moment the team has “a great atmosphere, the commercial department manages to find new sponsors in the most difficult conditions, everyone in the club is united and working for success.”

Meanwhile, Kommersant’s sources insist that LUKOIL is already looking for a person who could head the club’s management. Most often in this context the surname of Ashot Khachaturyants was mentioned.

Mr. Khachaturyants, a professional top manager who worked as the general director of Sberbank Capital, made a rapid career in domestic football management. In 2019 he entrusted referee committee of the Russian Football Union (RFU), and in the fall of 2021 – the RPL, which he unexpectedly left at the end of June. A Kommersant source familiar with the situation is sure that the candidacy of Ashot Khachaturyants has “many advantages”: “These are connections, rich experience as an anti-crisis manager, the ability to attract investments, a high status that allows you to avoid pressure. In addition, he is a devoted fan of Spartak. A Kommersant source who knows about the plan to “restructure” the management of the club, however, insists that the clear favorite in the fight for the Spartak post is Mr. Khachaturyants, “who managed to take drastic actions in the RFU and RPL, let’s say, completely ruin relations with the judges,” is not: “There are two or three very strong candidates, well-known people in football who can lead Spartak, if, of course, the idea is implemented. With this team, it’s impossible to be 100% sure of anything.”

What was meant is clear. Reforming the system of ownership and management of Spartak is by no means a new topic. Since 2003, it has been on the agenda at least twice, and it was initiated by Leonid Fedun himself. In 2015, he announced that he was handing over the authority to manage the club to “professionals”, and in 2019 he announced a project that caused no less excitement to transfer a controlling stake in his shares to fans. Both times the promises were not kept. In the middle of the last decade, Leonid Fedun did not last long in the shadows, eventually returning to his former prominent role. And the planned transformation of Spartak into a “people’s” and in the financial sense, the team has not been remembered since the spring of 2020, that is, since the beginning of the pandemic.

Alexey Dospekhov