What Vladimir Putin has done for Russian football – Sport – Kommersant

Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed to take measures by May 1 to simplify the use of football fan identification systems (Fan ID). With what other football initiatives he spoke during the years of his reign – in the material “Kommersant”.

In May 2006, Vladimir Putin met in Sochi with the players of the Russian youth team after their victory at the European Championship in Luxembourg. During the event, he expressed regret that only 300 out of 3,000 sports schools have football fields, and ordered to rectify the situation.

In March 2007, the President of Russia spoke out against the transfer of exclusive rights to broadcast all matches of the championship of Russia “NTV-Plus”, whose programs are available to viewers only by paid subscription. “They messed up something there again and want us, ordinary fans, to take away the opportunity to watch football matches for free,” the president said.

In May 2009 Vladimir Putin personally instructed to prepare an application for hosting the World Cup in Russia 2018.

In December 2010, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited the grave of Yegor Sviridov, a Spartak fan who died after an attack by a group of Caucasians, and Meets with representatives of associations of football fans. He urged fan clubs to beware of cooperation with extremists who work “exclusively for their own narrow, self-serving political goals”to “weaken the country, shake it up”.

In January 2012 Vladimir Putin helped the Tom team find sponsors when the Tomsk region stopped sponsoring the club from the local budget due to the financial crisis. “I’m ready to give a direct instruction, or rather, a request, I can’t force them, these are joint-stock companies, I can ask companies operating in the region to join the club,” he said. In July of the same year, a meeting was held in Moscow between Vladimir Putin, representatives of the club and seven energy companies. The media reported that the sponsors planned to allocate 300 million rubles to Tom.

In November 2016, the President of Russia met with the Totem children’s team, which won the World Football Championship among orphanages and boarding schools. Vladimir Putin invited the players to participate in events on the eve of the adult world championship and noted that “it turns out that football is alive in Russia.”

In October 2017 Vladimir Putin spoke out against the dominance of legionnaires in Russian clubs, in particular Zenit. “A truly Russian game is football. Eight foreigners run on the field for Zenit, play in the Europa League. And two citizens of the Russian Federation and one goalkeeper,” Vladimir Putin said then.

March 2018 Vladimir Putin and FIFA head Gianni Infantino played football in the green living room of the Moscow Kremlin. The President beat off the football functionary’s pass with his head. The footage was included in the official FIFA promo video. In June of the same year, Vladimir Putin and head Gianni Infantino played with a football simulator on Red Square.

In June 2018, at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, Vladimir Putin delivered a speech before the opening match of the FIFA World Cup in Russia, in which said that football in the country is “really loved”. “It’s what is called love at first sight,” he continued.

In June 2021, after the failed performance of the Russian national team at Euro, Vladimir Putin urged “to think about what was done positively by those people who were responsible for working in the national teams, and together with them to think about what needs to be changed now – I mean the personnel component in both football and hockey. Since July of the same year, instead of Stanislav Cherchesov, the team has been headed by Valery Karpin.

In August 2021, President Vladimir Putin instructed to find a general sponsor for the Nizhny Novgorod football club among state corporations. It was Gazprom Transgaz Nizhny Novgorod. According to media reports, the team’s 2022 funding application was about 1.8 billion rubles.

In September 2021 President spoke out against the abolition of the limit on legionnaires: “Do you not know that since 1988 the Russian team has not played at the Olympic Games? Well, there won’t be 20 years of playing if only foreigners play.”