After almost two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a group of very rich oligarchs are working on bringing back one of the most dominant forces from the days of the Iron Curtain. These powerful decision makers are proposing a new super league that would consist of clubs from the former Soviet Union. Through funding provided by Russian gas giants Gazprom, who own Zenit St. Petersburg, the new league would initially give clubs from Ukraine and Russia a €22 million incentive to join. However, the idea is still just a blueprint in the works as the politically dominant businessmen of the East work to try and curtail UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules. While the league sounds exciting for football fans living outside the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the current way these clubs are run might lead to some consequences in the future for the region. The proposed super league would draw a big crowd with heavy interest from the European community, but what would happen if someday the oligarch owners pulled out? Arsenal Kiev are already one example this year of a club that challenged in the Ukrainian top flight only to go bankrupt after their owner backed out. As a result, the club had to forfeit the Ukrainian Premier League. What if other oligarchs decide to venture away from football ownership someday? Anzhi Makhachkala recently dropped to the bottom of the Russian Premier League after its owner radically sold off all foreign players due to the not so immediate success of the club. It’s this type of risky behavior that could hurt a proposed super league someday. In retrospect, if the oligarchs are really interested in the well-being of football in their homeland then maybe they should instead focus their attention on investing in youth development within the CIS leagues. Then again this is the land of the former Soviet Union, where the memory of the Iron Curtain isn’t as distant as we would like to believe. The Soviet Supreme League was quite a dominant force in Europe before its break up in 1993. The most successful of the clubs was Dynamo Kiev leading the pack by winning two European Cup Winners’ Cups through their renowned coach Valeriy Lobanovsky, who also happened to manage the Soviet national team. Other major achievers included the Moscow based teams Dynamo and Spartak. By the 1988/89 season the Soviet Supreme League was so dominant that is was ranked the second best league in Europe by UEFA, but this dominance quickly faded as a crippling Soviet state started to allow players to leave and play in the West. One of the agendas of the proposed super league focuses on the difference between the East and West with money at the center. The Eastern structure doesn’t rely on TV contracts and ticket sales like the Western model. The Ukrainian and Russian teams rely solely on income from the immensely rich owners, who sway foreign players with lavish salaries to come play in the frigid Eastern climate. While the model brings in talents like Samuel Eto’o, Keisuke Honda and the strong Brazilian contingent at Shakhtar Donetsk, it isn’t as solid as it appears in the long haul. A proposed super league would rely exclusively on overpriced foreign talent. This type of emphasis could eventually undermine the Russian and Ukrainian youth systems, since the focus would be on giving the majority of playing time to the highly priced foreign talents. Even more concerning in the broad scheme is UEFA President Michel Platini’s stance on all of this. Platini has yet to give any official statements regarding the proposed super league, which only furthers the notion that everything has its price. Gazprom sponsors the UEFA Champions League, so maybe Mr. Platini is just making sure that the money keeps flowing in without any unnecessary criticisms. Now, I’m not saying that this super league wouldn’t be an exciting league to watch through its revitalized increase in competition. What I’m concerned with is the way this proposed new league is getting planned out without really assessing the consequences on the future of football in the CIS. If clubs in other states are eventually able to participate then a Georgian league without a powerhouse club like Dynamo Tbilisi or an Armenian league without Ararat Yerevan, both former Soviet Supreme League winners, would start to deteriorate. The major oligarchs need to figure in these factors, so they can maximize the super league’s potential because, whether it takes years to happen, the oligarchs always get their way in the land where the red star still illuminates the football pitch.
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