The first test for new club owners.
Paul Ashworth – brother of the star Premier League
The younger brother of Spartak’s sporting director candidate Dan, is one of the ideologues of the new English football. Dan Ashworth worked as director of development at the English Football Association, the teams came to life with him. Then there was an interesting segment in Potter’s Brighton, where Dan had his older brother Paul. It didn’t last long, he was listed as a video analyst. Then the youngest was recruited as a director by wealthy Newcastle, where he has great prospects.
Paul and his brother did not go to the Magpies, now Spartak can be entrusted to a man who has spent twenty years in Latvia, Kazakhstan and Nigeria. He also looked into Russia: he worked in Rostov in 2005. Why is the new Riancho in Moscow? It seems that it is not just Fedun and Salikhova … When Zarema chose a scout PSG Cattani to the position of sporting director, or when the board of directors appointed controversial Russian specialists like Popov to an important position, people were not surprised, they were already used to the mess.
But after all Lukoil, so far without a name, joined the club, in contrast to Fedun’s ways: “Let’s put things in order, we will work as technocrats.” As a result, they behaved strangely with the transfers, with the appointment of key people – from the president to the sports director, they dragged on. And now they’re trying to get Paul Ashworth back to Russia. He is not a nameless one, but simply an average specialist who has lived for a long time in countries where they understand the Russian language. The classic football traveler who loves a good salary.
It’s embarrassing that Ashworth has been on the road for more than twenty years and has long been alone in Skonto, where he worked as head coach. A bad mentor of him, a couple of years ago in Kazakhstan he finally switched to the job of manager: he was the executive director of Astana, and then for the first time he worked in Premier League. But the video analyst is not a sports director, Potter did not consult with Paul during recruiting. After the “seagulls” to Elder Ashworth, no one inside Premier League did not offer a job.
Balde was slapped with a disqualification
Keita is an athlete, his preparation is excellent, considering that steroids are excluded. Balde has often been tested in Serie A, all the champions are clean, but he has been disqualified. How is it possible? Once the Cagliari coach closed the team in the locker room after losing 1: 5 to Lazio. Doping agents are arrogant people, so after losing eye contact with Balde, the director noticed a protocol violation. The Italians believed that the club would pay a fine, because the sample itself was successfully taken, it is clean.
Jamaican shamans are not to blame, okay. Now Shamar Nicholson closer to the base? No, he needs to take care of Meleshin – see, the young striker will demonstrate the presence of the goal instinct, the coach will begin to trust him RPL. But why was it Balde then? Keita can play on the wing, maybe in the middle. Sobolev and Promes have lost Moses’ support due to an injury, the Senegalese with a Spanish passport could get back in shape in training, help Spartak with goals in the next games.
This is the dumbest loss of a football player. After the player’s farewell, the Cagliari lawyers did not care about the examination of the case of violation of the protocol. Rio Ferdinand once played until disqualification for 8 months and missed Euro 2004 because he had a fight with an anti-doping agent and refused to take a test. Balde did no such thing, but Spartak knew of the violation. They say the player has now turned down the money and the Moscow lawyers shrug. If the appeal is filed in Italy while it is under consideration, the suspension period expires.
The question is: was it worth hiring a player if there was a risk of disqualification? But this is Spartak, Pedro Rocher was paid millions here and an Italian goalkeeper was signed for the reserve for a lot of money, who now plays almost in the backyard team. He helped Roma get around the rules FIFA and don’t share money with former Argentine club Ponce. In a word, Balde’s sad fate is in the style of the Spartacus galaxy. Here’s what happens if the transfers are made without a smart sports director.
Moscow “scared” one of the newcomers
The CEO of the Red-Whites told an incredible story. We agreed with 32-year-old Spaniard Alvaro Gonzalez, former central defender of Villarreal and the new Gigot club, Marseille. He could become “red-white” as a free agent. We agreed, the player’s family was collecting things, and then there was a car explosion in Moscow, which killed Daria Dugina. Alvaro read the news, presumably because of this he refused to move. Do you believe?
Most likely, in the club of Rudi Garcia – “Al-Nasr”, the Spaniard was offered more money. But Spartak swallowed the defeat and then didn’t eliminate another Spartak of the Greeks, a Manchester City school playmaker. There are no acquisitions. Is the myth of a certain sage Lukoil, more coherent than the inattentive Fedun, crumbling before our eyes? It is funny that some people have considered the sale of the club “Deus ex machina”, “God from the machine”, an unexpected epilogue of success, salvation. It seems these “red-white” fans don’t know that Alekperov and Fedun ran Lukoil.
This club has no prepackaged genes for the football sphere, we must immediately deal with this. If there were such people, Fedun himself appointed them in Spartak ten years ago. Furthermore, the company may not even have money to live on to finance the previous volumes. Pay attention to an important detail: the club, which the Fedun brothers estimate at 1 billion euros (about 60.5 billion rubles at the current exchange rate), was sold to Lukoil ten times less, so these 6 billion rubles are been left to keep the stadium and other infrastructure in order.
Strange deal, don’t you think? This does not mean that Fedun is gone, but he has stayed. But the appearance of Paul Ashworth, who was present at the talks between Spartak and the Saudi Arabian sheikhs last year, could suggest the search for new investors. In this case it is understandable why Cattani left and the new arrivals, necessary to reinforce a strong start, have not arrived. Now they are not looking for a Russian sports director, as Camozzi advises, but an Englishman who has barely lived at home for twenty years.
The red and white are entering a new era as if the old one was not over. Hiring Balde without checking how Cagliari lawyers are handling his disqualification case is a puncture in the style of the legendary characters who have ruled Spartak in the past. And in the future we must accept that a strong foreign specialist – if they suddenly do not find a genius of football management in Bobruisk, he will not come to Moscow. Without a vertical of power, even Manchester United can live ten years without a championship crown, and now Spartak have only Abascal from the real backbone, even if tomorrow he will be tested for a cart problem.
