Blatter's interests

The next Commonwealth Cup is gaining momentum

The 14th Commonwealth and Baltic Champions Cup started in Moscow. The previous one, with the resignation of Vyacheslav Koloskov from the post of President of the RFU, could well have been the last. The former head of the Russian Football Union has always been considered a confidant of FIFA President Sepp Blatter for contacts with federations of the CIS countries. And the Commonwealth Cup was, first of all, a kind of summit at which football leaders gathered once a year to discuss the overall strategy, and at the same time solve their problems in personal communication with the top officials of FIFA and UEFA. However, the tournament, which around the beginning of the century lost the remnants of its sporting significance, and then its ideological leader Vyacheslav Koloskov, seems to still be needed by football politicians. And maybe not just them.

The only sector of the Olimpiysky sports complex that is always more or less full belongs to VIPs. There are always plenty of them here - present and former. There are more former ones. Ex-coach of Dynamo Moscow Alexey Petrushin, ex-head coach of the Russian youth team Leonid Pakhomov, ex-mentor of Dynamo Kyiv Alexey Mikhailichenko... There are agents of all stripes nearby, starting with Konstantin Sarsania. They haven't had much work to do at recent tournaments: the rosters of even the champions of the Commonwealth countries have been studied thoroughly, and almost every player of interest has already been assessed. And, of course, real VIPs, for whom everyone else comes. Among them is Shakhtar owner Rinat Akhmetov, accompanied by the club's sports director Viktor Prokopenko. A little further down the podium is CSKA President Evgeny Ginner. Even lower, the sports director of Dynamo Moscow, Boris Ignatiev... In the bar under the stands, Yuri Sevidov.

Perhaps the most interested person at the tournament is FIFA President Sepp Blatter. The games themselves are hardly interesting to him, but the people around him are. The Commonwealth Cup is perhaps the only competition of the year where Blatter can meet with all the presidents of the football federations of the CIS and Baltic countries. On Saturday, the head of FIFA persistently searched for the president of the Armenian federation. The search was unsuccessful. “Moscow is a big city, it’s probably lost,” Blatter was upset, but was determined to resume the search this week.

Blatter found everyone else he wanted. From the President of the Kazakhstan Federation he received news of being awarded the Order of Friendship, from Belarus - an invitation to Minsk for the opening of the House of Football, and from almost everyone else - moral support. In turn, RFU President Vitaly Mutko received $100 thousand from Blatter to host the Commonwealth Cup. But the tournament itself costs the Russian Football Union 800 thousand. In current times, this is a quite noticeable blow to the RFU budget.

That is why Vitaly Mutko plans to meet with his colleagues from other federations one of these days and discuss plans for reforming the Cup. One of the initiatives - to hold competitions in groups in various cities of the Commonwealth countries, and then the final part in Moscow - has no longer found support. This formula only increases costs. But the idea of ​​shifting the tournament to the beginning of February and making it a moving tournament, holding it in turn in various CIS capitals, including on natural fields, may well turn out to be viable.

These concerns led to the start of the tournament itself. Although there was something to see on the field. First of all - for the CSKA double. As if emphasizing that the main squad of the Russian champions did not intend to take part in the Cup, the army reserve team took to the field wearing T-shirts with numbers starting from 35. All are under 20 years old. At the same time, the youth team of CSKA coped with Dynamo Tbilisi, which is now coached by Kakha Tskhadadze, 1:0. But, for example, Shakhtar's double team lost its first match at the tournament to Moldavian Sheriff - 2:3. But the biggest surprise of the first gaming day of the tournament was the major defeat of the Kazakh Aktobe to the Latvian Metallurg. The club from Liepaja last year violated the championship hegemony of Riga Skonto, depriving the Commonwealth Cup of its most permanent participant. Apparently, not in vain. “Metallurg” defeated the champion of Kazakhstan in the first match of the tournament - 3:0, and this despite the fact that quite well-known football players in Russia Denis Klyuev, Konstantin Golovskoy, Alexey Kosolapov, Sergei Yaskovich, Menuver Rizvich and Evgeniy Plotnikov play for “Aktobe” .

Andrey VDOVIN