Former general director of Spartak Evgeny Melezhikov told RB Sport that he never had conflicts with the club’s sports director Paul Ashworth.

Last week, Melezhikov left Spartak by agreement of the parties. He was replaced by Oleg Malyshev, who previously held senior positions in one of the largest consulting companies in the world. Ashworth was named the team’s sporting director in September 2022.

– Do you have any conflicts with the English gentleman who holds the post of sports director of the club?

There is no conflict with Paul Ashworth and never has been. I did not pay attention to stuffing about the conflict, but now I confirm once again that I have no disagreements or conflicts with him. Moreover, at some point, in the second part of the championship, we agreed that we accept as a fact that Paul is an independent figure and, as a professional person, I tried not to get into his work. We had a dialogue, communicated from the point of view of building a system. I never pretend to be the choice of football players, this is not my professional competence. But the system of preparation for the transfer campaign, the justification of candidates – I have studied this well during my work in sports. In this regard, Paul and I interacted. There are many pitfalls in these issues, and given the number of leaks, we agreed to minimize the number of people who have information about the shortlist. I intentionally moved away from this information so that in the future we could determine the source of the drain,” Melezhikov said.

Melezhikov has served as the CEO of Spartak since June 2021. In the season ended, Spartak took third place in the WORLD RPL.