Translated material
Legionnaires' disease
However, attempts to present the matter as if the dominance of legionnaires prevents young home-grown talents from revealing themselves is, at the very least, a strong exaggeration. This, as Mikhail Mikhailovich Zhvanetsky wrote, is the fight against mold instead of the fight against dampness.
If we talk about football, today foreign players play key roles in leading Russian teams. But if, for example, we take the undisputed leader of domestic football of the last three years - CSKA, then in addition to the foreign players of the highest quality by Russian standards (Daniel Carvalho and Vagner Love try out for the Brazilian national team, Ivica Olic periodically takes the field for Croatia, recovering from injuries to Chidi Odia - the main player of the Nigerian national team, etc.) young Russian talents also feel quite comfortable. No one will deny that it was in CSKA that goalkeeper Igor Akinfeev and winger Yuri Zhirkov grew to the level of the main players of the Russian national team. And not least thanks to the presence of great foreign masters next to them on the field.
There is no such kamikaze coach who would refuse to put a Russian player on the team if he is superior in class or in readiness for a given specific game of a foreign player. Therefore, even a more moderate version of fear of legionnaires - talk that good legionnaires are still good, since they bring ours up to their level, and bad ones are bad, because they block the path for our promising youth - is also not very adequate reality.
The reality is that Russian children's football is in a rut, and master teams are not spending money on training reserves. Of course, theoretically, it is possible to completely prohibit our football clubs from buying foreigners. Only, I’m afraid, in this case, their owners will not rush to compete to see who will invest more of the freed-up millions of dollars in children’s football, but will try to get out of this unprofitable business altogether. The foundation for victories has been laid for decades, but our football clubs have not yet become truly professional.
Again, before our eyes there is an example of hockey, in which Russia has historically been much more successful than in football. Legionnaires appeared in our hockey clubs much later than Russia stopped winning on the world stage. But the production of talented hockey players in the country has not yet stopped. And what’s the big deal that our main talents are trying to go overseas to the National Hockey League? If only they played for the Russian national team. Again, Russian hockey clubs would have decent additional money if the leadership of our Hockey Federation finally deigned to sign an agreement with the NHL and achieve the largest possible amounts of compensation for Russians leaving for the overseas league. If we manage to establish the hockey and football business, as in the NHL and the leading football leagues of the world, then, of course, Russian players will have financial reasons not to strive abroad. And legionnaires will come to us of a much higher class. And not for one season, as was recently the case due to the lockout in the NHL, but for a fairly long period of my career.
In general, whatever one may say, Russia’s failures in the country’s most popular team sports are not directly related to the dominance of foreign players. In the end, Russia played football poorly even when there were no traces of any foreign players in our clubs. Therefore, the fight against foreign players is completely futile from the point of view of raising the class of domestic players. Everything here is exactly like in the automotive industry: because you don’t know how to make high-quality cars, but at the same time ban foreign cars, your cars won’t drive better.