Usmanov steps in to pay Capello £3.9m in owed wages

The Arsenal shareholder Alisher Usmanov has stepped in with an emergency loan so that Russia can pay national team coach Fabio Capello 400 million roubles (£3.9m) in back wages.


The country’s richest man, a mining magnate who is worth an estimated $14bn according to Forbes and is the second-largest shareholder in Arsenal, announced late on Thursday that he was giving the Russian Football Union a 400-million-rouble loan on preferential terms, and the first payment was made later that night. Usmanov made the loan at the request of the sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, who said on Thursday that the back wages would be paid over the course of two days.

“I think the situation created by the current Russian Football Union management is intolerable,” Usmanov said in a statement. “It’s an embarrassment when a person who works for Russia doesn’t receive wages for his labour.”

Although the money has finally started to flow, Russia will still owe Capello for his work so far in 2015, an issue that must be solved soon to preserve the “country’s prestige,” Mutko told state news agency R-Sport.

Moscow has been scrambling to find ways to cut the budget for the 2018 World Cup in Russia by 10% as part of a new “anti-crisis plan” in response to economic woes caused by low oil prices and Western sanctions against the country.

Capello and the general manager, Oreste Cinquini, were reportedly last paid before the World Cup in June, when Russia were knocked out in the group stage after drawing two matches and losing one. Since then the rouble has lost more than half of its value, making Capello’s estimated €8m contract that much more expensive. The Russian Football Union had repeatedly said it lacked the money to pay him.

In total, the coaching staff is reportedly owed 600 million roubles (£5.9m). While some lawmakers have proposed tying the coach’s wages to the team’s performance, others have called the months-long delay in payment a national embarrassment.

This is not the first time Usmanov has bailed out the Russian Football Union. It came to light in January that he had donated 300 million roubles (£2.9m) to the organisation just before the World Cup. Fifa also gave $350,000 to Russia in January as an extra bonus for its appearance in Brazil.

The Russian Football Union will ask the anti-crisis committee “what steps will be taken so we don’t fall into the same situation” with Capello’s contract, executive committee member Sergei Pryadkin told R-Sport. Despite how costly Capello has become, Russia has no choice but to stick with him. It would be prohibitively expensive to break the contract, and Russia has no viable candidate to replace him, the Russian Football Union president emeritus Vyacheslav Koloskov has argued.

Despite the newly paid wages, Russia’s labour regulator said it would continue its investigation into the football union, which it began last month in light of unpaid salaries. The news agency Interfax reported in November that the wages of more than 23 union employees hadn’t been paid.


by Alec Luhn, Guardian