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National Football Academic
Roman Abramovich to Build a Training Center for the Russian Football
Team
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Guus Hiddink, the head coach of the Russian
national soccer team (left), and assistant coach Alexander Borodyuk
(right) at the Russian national soccer team's open house on August
14, 2006. Photo: Ilya Pitalev
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Roman Abramovich is embarking on a new football project.
The Chukotka region's governor and the owner of London's Chelsea football
club is financing the construction by the National Football Academy of
a training center in the Moscow Oblast town of Zvenigorod for the Russian
national football team. The cost of the complex is estimated at $30-40
million. The project will be overseen by the Kremlin: the head of the
committee in charge of the creation of new football training centers in
Russia is Arkady Dvorkovich, the chief of the Russian presidential administration's
expert management department.
Kommersant has obtained a copy of the concept plan for the development
of training centers for the Russian national football team. The plan was
prepared by a team under the direction of Arkady Dvorkovich, the chief
of the Russian presidential administration's expert management department.
In October the committee's experts visited several European countries
and toured football training centers in The Netherlands, Italy, and France.
They also held consultations with the Russian team's former coaches: Valery
Gazzaev, Yury Semin, Boris Ignatyev, and Mikhail Gershovich. Yesterday
Alisher Aminov, a member of the committee, told Kommersant that work on
the conceptual plan is finished and that the document will be presented
to the steering committee of the Russian Football Union for review and
approval within the next two months. The complex is slated to be operational
by 2008.
The project's chief investor will be the National Football Academy, an
organization financed by Roman Abramovich, who also serves as the chairman
of its board of directors. The Academy already pays national team coach
Guus Hiddink's salary (he earns $2.65 million for two years of work) and
has undertaken the construction of numerous football fields (55 fields
will have been built by 2009) at a total cost of $25 million and the preparation
of a project to build a stadium for the national team in the Moscow region
of Otradnoe for an estimated $30-40 million.
The plan for the new training center includes six full-sized football
fields with natural surfacing, four fields with artificial surfacing,
two small enclosed fields, a covered exhibition hall with artificial surfacing,
a swimming pool, a weight room, a tennis court, an athletic track, two
hotels with capacities of 50 and 70, and living quarters for 240 people.
The government of Moscow Oblast has already informed the committee that
the regional authorities will give their permission for the training center
to be built in Zvenigorod. Yesterday Zvenigorod mayor Leonid Stavitsky
told Kommersant that his town is ready for the construction of the national
training facility, since "three years ago, we set aside 30 hectares
of land in the center of town along both sides of the Moscow river for
a large sports complex." In Mr. Stavitsky's opinion, the committee
has chosen an excellent location for the training center: "Zvenigorod
is unique ecologically because it has no industrial enterprises, and it
is located just 45 minutes from both Sheremetovo Airport and Vnukovo Airport,"
he said.
A lack of training infrastructure is one of the most pressing problems
facing Russian football. While teams in Italy, France, Germany, and other
Western European countries enjoy a well-developed system of football training
centers on the national, interregional, and regional levels, even the
national team in Russia has trouble finding practice facilities. Since
2000, the team has prepared for matches at a ranch owned by the Russian
president that includes just a single football field. Prior to that, the
team trained at a facility that was constructed for the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
However, current national team coach Guus Hiddink came to Russia from
coaching a team in the Dutch town of Eindhoven, which features one of
the best training facilities in Europe. Coach Hiddink refused to keep
diplomatically silent about the poor state of the Russian team's facilities,
and soon Russian Football Union President Vitaly Mutko started talking
about the necessity of building the national team its own modern training
facility in the Moscow region.
The possibility of building a training center for the national team in
Sochi is also being discussed. According to information obtained by Kommersant,
it is hoped that the construction costs, which would be much less than
the cost of the Moscow-area center, will be paid by the company "Bazovoi
Element" and by management committee said that eight interregional
football training centers are also being planned for regions around the
country.
The training center in the Moscow region is slated to be open around the
clock and for many more days out of the year than the 30-40 days that
the team will spend training there each season. Other teams, including
the Russian national youth and women's teams, will also be able to practice
there, and the center will host football camps for children, a medical-biological
research center, and a training and licensing facility for professional
and children's coaches.
It remains unclear who will manage the center. Kommersant's source within
the planning committee explained that two options are being considered:
the facility will be maintained either by the country's Football Union,
as in France, or by an outside management company (most likely one associated
with the National Football Academy), as in Italy. The management of the
center will undoubtedly be a lucrative venture: in France, for example,
the National Football Academy regularly receives money for graduates who
go on to play for the country's strongest teams. Past success stories
include French national team forwards Thierry Henry and Louis Saha.
Aleksey DOSPEKHOV. Kommersant,
Dec. 13, 2006
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