World Cup 2018: From Russia with (little) love
few months ago, Russia dramatically cut its World Cup 2018 budget and it all sounds pretty ominous.
Where there had been grandiose plans for 100,000 hotel rooms being available to travelling supporters, there’s now a rather bleak alternative due to the ruthless accommodation cuts.
In one of the host cities, Nizhny Novgorod (formerly Gorky) which lies 400km east of Moscow, one proposal is to allow fans occupy vacant university dorms. Still, the chief executive of the tournament, Alexey Sorokin is remaining optimistic. After all, he said, many fans can stay on boats or in local camping facilities.
There are other issues too. In Saint-Petersburg, construction began on the new Zenit Arena in 2007 and was estimated to be completed in two years.
It proved a very optimistic deadline. Work is still continuing and the latest update suggests it won’t be finished until next year. Any more delays and its proposed hosting of the opening game of the 2017 Confederations Cup could be in jeopardy.
And with delays come spiralling costs. Some reports have suggested the Zenit mess has cost close to €1 billion. It’s happened in the country’s capital too. The building of the Otkrynie Arena was a long drawn-out, eight-year drama before it was unveiled as a World Cup venue and a new home for local side Spartak. That cost €450m.
But accommodation and construction problems are inevitable for any host of a major sports event. And Russia has been here before, put through similar scrutiny when the Winter Olympics were held in Sochi in 2014. But back then, there was an ugly social concern too as headlines focused on the country’s hard-line stance on homosexuality. And ahead of the 2018 World Cup, there’s another unsettling underbelly: the country’s complex relationship with racism. It’s been a tough few days for Russian football authorities. Try as they might to distance themselves from the inconvenient truth of how a discriminatory culture relentlessly bubbles to the surface, they’ve been undone by a swarm of recent race-related stories.
A week ago, on the opening day of the new Russian league season, the former Arsenal midfielderEmmanuel Frimpong was sent off after making an offensive gesture to Spartak fans while playing for FC Ufa. He said he heard monkey chants. The Russian FA (RFU) disagreed. They banned the midfielder for two games and rubbished the racism claims. Insufficient evidence, they said.
Zenit striker Hulk, who had been scheduled to take part in today’s preliminary World Cup draw before being stood down due to ‘club commitments’, said he experienced racism in ‘almost every game’ and said he feared the extent of the problem would stain the country when it came to its 2018 hosting duties. Last December, the Brazilian claimed he had even been racially abused by a referee, Alexei Matyunin, in a league game. Investigations from the RFU cleared the official of any wrong-doing. Insufficient evidence, they said.
And then for something completely different.
Olga Kuzkova, a 21-year-old and a proud CSKA Moscow supporter, had been crowned ‘Miss Charming’ at an annual beauty pageant organised by the Russian league in which various women represent each top-flight club. But there was a slight problem. Kuzkova was a neo-Nazi. In between the selfies and pretty dresses, her page on a popular Russian social media network also featured a photo of her making a Nazi gesture while standing in front of some pro-Nazi graffiti. Her other postings included an image of a woman wearing a swastika armband accompanied by anti-Semitic text. But after the initial storm passed, a revelation quickly followed as the league’s executive director, Sergei Cheban, admitted it was Kuzkova who asked to be stripped of the title.
The top brass asked her to “not be so hasty” before finally relenting. Cheban’s mild stance on such a deeply unsettling incident said much. “It was unfortunate that it happened,”he said.
The Kuzkova story is arguably more damning than anything else. The club she was representing in the pageant — CSKA — have made substantial efforts to combat racism after a litany of high-profile incidents.
“Since the ‘CSKA Fans Against Racism’ movement was formed last year there have been no reports of racism at CSKA games,” says Russian football writer Saul Pope.
“For the team’s forthcoming Champions League qualifier against Sparta Prague next week, the club has issued a letter with every ticket — warning fans not to wear right-wing insignia at the game. This might sound obvious to football fans in other countries, but it’s something of a revelation in Russia.”
It’s difficult to put a finger on when racism first began to permeate football in the country but it’s certainly not a newfound phenomenon. Black players began arriving there when the oligarchs swooped in and took control of the teams. Following the example of successful western sides, the new owners signed South Americans and Africans to provide skill and speed, thereby moving away from that stereotypically robust eastern-European style. But soon there was a simmering tension, perhaps stemming from the uncomfortable notion of outside help. Russia, after all, likes to do things its own way.
“There is a feeling of being constantly criticised and undermined, and also a resentment that those in the west are seemingly saying, ‘these are our values, and they must automatically become yours as well’,” says Pope.
“That suspicion and resentment and feeling of being dictated to is poisonous.” But as the world grows increasingly smaller, Russians are becoming more aware of their international image. What hasn’t been reported in the aftermath of the Frimpong incident in particular is the outpouring of comments left on various Russian media sites condemning the idiocy of the Spartak fans’ behaviour.
“The problem has always been there and was worse in the nineties,” says Pope.
“The culture was much more passive then and far fewer people had the opportunity to travel abroad and meet with non-Russian speakers so there was less understanding of the problem. Back then it was seen just as general yobbishness — something that deserved a metaphorical clip around the ear at most.” “The racism issue is a serious one but I feel that things are changing,” he continues.
“What was a silent and passive majority are now more frequently speaking up about racism which bodes well for the future. I believe that it is crucial to engage with these fans — the western approach tends to tar all Russian fans with the same brush, which is grossly unfair when there are plenty who share the same viewpoints.” As much as things may be getting better, there’s still a long way to go. The influence of far-right ultra groups is embedded in the culture and history of many clubs so it makes it all the more difficult to instigate change. At an organisational level, there appears a widespread flippancy regarding racism. For many key decision-makers, it’s an inconvenience when placed in the wider context of other social and political issues.
Sceptics predicted much in the build-up to the Sochi Olympics yet Russia got the job done without suffering any real hangover. The hope is for something similar in 2018.
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