Vladimir Osipov – about the upcoming matches of the Russian national football team

The Russian national football team retained its 38th place in the FIFA rankings. The next list of teams was published on the organization’s website. Russia is positioned between Qatar, winners of the home Asian Cup, and African Cup of Nations champion Cote d’Ivoire. Argentina still occupies first place in the ranking. After being suspended from international tournaments, the Russian national team plays only friendly matches. Moreover, this year Valery Karpin’s team has serious sparring partners. In March, the football team meets Serbia and Paraguay. Whether this can be considered a shift for the better, Kommersant FM sports heater Vladimir Osipov examined.

There have been a lot of conversations about the fact that the Russian football team has been playing with weak teams for two years now. And no matter how the head of the football union, Alexander Dyukov, tried to justify himself, saying that all this is not the main thing, the criticism did not decrease. There is still plenty of it, but still the level of the team’s sparring partners has become higher. Serbia is a participant in Euro 2024, and Paraguay’s team includes some serious players from the English Premier League. Although if you compare the price tags for the players of the Paraguayan national team and Russia as a whole, then ours are more expensive. The well-known portal Transfermarkt estimates the Paraguayan national team at approximately €130 million, and the Russian national team at €165 million.

It is clear that all this is subjective, but overall Paraguay has a strong team. But the financial component of the upcoming meeting plays an important role, says football manager Yuri Belous: “Everything has its price. It’s one thing if they pay top money and top teams like Brazil, Argentina and so on come. But Paraguay is still not the main national team in Latin America. I won’t say that it’s in the background, but still.”

It’s no secret that the Russian Football Union is forced to pay for such matches. What amounts are unknown; our football officials do not answer such questions. So we can only focus on those numbers that are publicly available. For example, in November 2017, Argentina was paid €1 million for a match at Luzhniki. The market price tag was €2 million, but we were given a discount as the hosts of the World Cup.

Now that the national team is in a difficult situation, it is impossible to talk about discounts, and, most likely, teams such as Serbia and Paraguay have to pay considerable sums. But the interest in such meetings will definitely be increased, noted Dmitry Bulykin, who now holds the position of anti-match-fixing officer at the RFU: “I think full stands can gather to watch and support the players. Although this is a friendly match, it is very close to the official one, and the opponents are good – Serbia and Paraguay.”

At the same time, the RFU is unlikely to be able to recoup the costs of holding such matches. Tickets for such events are usually inexpensive. For example, a visit to the Russia-Cameroon meeting last year cost fans from 400 rubles. up to 2.5 thousand rubles. Most likely, going to Serbia and Paraguay is unlikely to be more expensive, because they play at the same Dynamo stadium.

But the RFU can afford the costs of opponents for the country’s main team. The organization’s budget for 2024 is 11 billion rubles, which is approximately €110 million. But the improvement in the level of opponents does not bring the team closer to returning to the international arena. Not everyone understands the difficulties that officials will have to face even with a positive decision from FIFA and UEFA, says businessman, former owner of Spartak Andrei Chervichenko: “There are countries to which we, in principle, cannot go. And today there are a dozen rabid Russophobes there. And I don’t know how to solve this problem. It is the everyday aspects of this issue that are also very important.”

However, such difficulties now seem to worry only the fans. In general, the financial component in our football can be called stable. And it’s not just the RFU that feels confident. According to the latest data, the revenue of Russian clubs for last season exceeded €1 billion, and this, for a minute, is the sixth place in Europe after the representatives of the top leagues. Yes, England has €6.5 billion, but even with the numbers demonstrated by our football, it is definitely inappropriate to talk about a crisis, despite the isolation. At least about the financial crisis.

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