The effigy of winter has been burnt, and the conditions around us are looking more and more like those suitable for playing football. The championship will follow the Cup in the first days of March, and in the thaw it is easy to forget how recently, to allow the game between Lokomotiv and Spartak, judge Vladislav Bezborodov, an hour before school time, carefully peered into a thermometer fixed at a meter height above the center of the field.

But the “cold start” of the season is repeated from year to year. Every time we ask each other: why do football in Russia have to shovel snow? Are we really limited in time? Recently, in connection with the removal from European competitions, these issues are sharpened. We again reach the root question about the “spring-autumn”.

But this winter, new circumstances have appeared that, on the one hand, justify the uncomfortable calendar, and on the other hand, give the fans a previously unseen means of creating comfort in the stands.

The clubs themselves asked for an early start to the season.

This year is an odd one, and even if we forget that our team is not yet allowed to compete with anyone and be selected anywhere, in principle, nothing urges us on in the spring part. We have the right to delay it at least until the end of June. Why did we start playing in 2023 a week before the end of February?

It turned out that this was not the inertia of the compilers of the calendar, but the request of the clubs themselves. The teams of the Russian south have been deprived of the opportunity to fly to away matches from the airports of their cities for a year now. It is also not easy for rivals to visit them. Traveling on trains significantly lengthens the “transport shoulders”, and clubs would like not only to solve crossword puzzles in a compartment, but also to train at least sometimes in a human way.

At the same time, the calendar, taking into account the new format of the Russian Cup, is quite tight, the number of matches has increased. Therefore, the desire of the clubs looks legitimate, especially if our domestic season had a hard summer border, obliging us to complete the domestic season by a certain date. This milestone was set by the league. It would be logical to move it “to the right”. What prevents this? Perhaps only the absence of the need to do this for both the league and the clubs. In a system where the decision is consistent only with these two subjects, a calm balance has been found that suits both.

Photo: © Mikhail Zimin / Match TV

Let’s start asking the fans too

What would make the calendar in such conditions as flexible as possible? Third party opinion! And she is available. Moreover, it is the third only in this equation, but generally speaking, it is the first and main one. These are our fans. We always say that football is for them, that all this in general is only for their sake and started. But their opinion has been taken into account for decades only on a residual basis, if at all.

Ask them at any time: do you want to stand on the podium at -15, or warm? It is clear what the answer will be. But earlier it could be objected that there is a calendar framework, and there is no polling mechanism that would clearly fix the answer in terms of percentage of supporters and opponents.

But welcome to the new reality. In which there are no real calendar frameworks (or they are conditional), but the mechanism has appeared! After all, judging by the latest data from the Ministry of Digital Development, almost 400,000 football fans are registered in Russia through the State Services system. Moreover, the meaning of this accounting was precisely to count those who express their readiness to go to the stadiums, and not just platonic love this game.

Need a mobile app for verified fan surveys

A means to actually take into account the wishes of the fans can be created. This is a purely technical question: who will undertake to develop an appropriate mobile application? Strictly speaking, we do not need to be pioneers in direct football democracy here. Some mechanisms already exist in the world, moreover, for many years. For example, the Spanish system of “socios” – official club supporters-shareholders, who even choose presidents in great teams. Or a more recent experience of crowdfunding teams that are funded and, therefore, managed by shareholder fans.

The next step for Russia, a world leader in digital services, is to create a mobile app that would allow registered fans to vote on some significant issues.

With all due respect to the 16 Premier League clubs and the several hundred people who work in them in total, if these organizations have 400,000 clients, you should first of all ask about the convenience of being at matches at -15. That is, the fans.

The appearance of such a “voting box” in our football looks like a completely natural crown of all these accounting and control processes. When viewers have a convenient means of participation and control, this will finally remove all barriers of distrust. And in football you can and should vote regularly, for example, to determine the best player. Though a particular match, even the whole season.