Football
ESPN staff and Associated Press 9y

Russia fans raising cash to fund Fabio Capello sacking

Russia fans have started a crowdfunding bid to raise the funds required to sack Fabio Capello.

The Russian Football Union (RFU) is considering whether to sack Capello after a 1-0 loss to Austria seriously dented the team's hopes of qualifying for Euro 2016.

Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko has said Capello could be fired this month after Russia won just two of their last 10 games, but the former England boss was handed a lucrative contract extension in January 2014 that tied him to the nation until after the 2018 World Cup.

That deal is reportedly worth €7 million ($7.9m) a year with a clause specifying over €21m ($23.5m) in compensation if he is fired, and the RFU is deeply in debt and losing money.

Capello did not receive his wages for over six months and Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov said in February that he was loaning the RFU £3.9m to pay the Italian what he was owed.

In recent weeks, the RFU has again been unable to meet Capello's wages, Russian media report.

Given the RFU's financial predicament, Russia fans Anton Danilkovich and Vladislav Shunaev started a crowdfunding bid, entitled "Fabio, go home," on Tuesday to raise money for his dismissal.

The pair explained: "We think that anyone who isn't indifferent to the fate of football in Russia has been deeply disappointed by our national team's performances recently. We've all had our souls spat on."

Mutko, the sports minister and chairman of the World Cup organising committee, has said he expects a decision on Capello's future by July 10 at the latest, but told the R-Sport agency on Tuesday: "I'm not a fan of blaming everything on departing coaches."

If Capello does leave, the likely successor would be Leonid Slutsky, who won the Russian Premier League title with CSKA Moscow in 2013 and 2014 and guided the team to a second-place finish this season. He would be Russia's first non-foreign coach since 2006.

The situation is further complicated because the RFU is in chaos. Its president, Nikolai Tolstykh, lost a vote of confidence last month and, until a successor is elected, the organisation is temporarily in the hands of 88-year-old former player Nikita Simonyan, the acting president.

Fans are unhappy with Capello, but they are also increasingly turning away from football completely.

The Russian Premier League's average attendance this season was just 10,151, far below even the second tier of English football.

As well as the Russian weather, fans must contend with Soviet-era stadiums that are reaching the end of their useful life, while poor pitch maintenance means matches are regularly moved to cities hundreds of miles away in search of a playable surface.

Moreover, an RFU crackdown has meant more matches being played behind closed doors as punishment for fan racism.

"Games are played late in the fall, or in the spring, when it's not comfortable," Russian Fans' Union leader Alexander Shprygin said. "The stadiums have got old and there aren't very interesting matches at the moment, there's some unusual refereeing going on and a complex of problems, which could, let's say, cause problems for spectators."

The Russian Premier League argues the lack of fans is a temporary problem that will be solved when the government's World Cup spending gives teams a raft of new arenas, plus a refurbished 81,000-capacity national stadium -- Luzhniki in Moscow.

The massive program of World Cup construction is proceeding apace and largely on schedule as Russia readies 12 new or refurbished arenas in 11 cities.

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