Kerimov’s Arab sheiks-style Anji investments good for Russian football
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Unlike the other Russian moneybags that have spent millions of pounds, dollars and euros on acquisitions of high-profile soccer and basket clubs across the globe, multibillionaire Suleiman Kerimov has decided to invest parts of his vast fortune, estimated by Forbes Journal at $7.8bln, making him the world’s 118th wealthiest business tycoon, into the Anji Makhachkala football club in his native Dagestan.
Indeed, acquisition or financial involvement in world famous professional sports teams has become the latest pastimes for Russian oligarchs. The acquisitions list is comprehensive, but suffice it to name just a few. The trendsetter was Roman Abramovich, who acquired Chelsea Football Club in 2003 for 140mln pounds, and Mikhail Prokhorov, who reportedly paid about $200mln in 2009 to acquire an 80% stake of the NBA’s New Jersey Nets basketball team. Similarly, most recently, Metalloinvest owner Alisher Usmanov, having significantly boosted his stake in London’s Arsenal to almost 30%, is now in a pole position to break the long-standing stalemate in his two-horse race with Wal-Mart-anchored Stan Kroenke, the current majority shareholder, to eventually gain the full ownership of the British football club.
However, before turning on his unprecedented, wealth-backed patriotism for Russian club soccer, Kerimov, the principal shareholder of Nafta Moscow, an investment group with its tentacles over all the most lucrative sectors of the Russian economy, also like his Russian billionaire colleagues, had tried to purchase clubs abroad, notably, Roma, the Italy’s Serie A franchise, in 2004, but the deal fell through for undisclosed reasons. But with the type of millions of euros and dollars being splashed around by the Russian billionaire, Roma fans now have all the right causes to blame their club’s current dire financial state on its myopic owners and management. It is probably the devastation of the Roma acquisition setback that ignited the spirit of soccer entrepreneurship in Kerimov, much in line with the aged proverb, which says an opportunity lost by one is an opportunity gained by another.
In this context, Anji has all the right causes to be happy at this positive turn of events in its recent history, evident in its sponsor’s Arab sheiks-style summer transfer spending spree on securing internationally famed athletes. Thus, in one of his latest deals, Kerimov signed Cameroon striker Samuel Eto'o, an international football star with three UEFA Champions League titles — two with Spanish Barcelona and one with Italy’s Inter Milan, Olympic Soccer and African Cup of Nations medals on his illustrious resume, in a record-market shattering three-year contract deal that could make the Cameroonian the highest-paid footballer in the world.
Traditionally, the financial terms of the deal have remained a tightly kept secret, but according to sources claiming to have first hand knowledge of the landmark transaction, the Cameroonian’s net salary is about 20mln euros per season, while the transfer fee paid to Inter Milan to secure the player was set at almost 30mln euros. For comparison, Eto’o’s new salary, now the biggest annual pay package in global soccer, significantly dwarfs the 12mln euros that Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portugal soccer megastar, currently earns at Real Madrid and is almost twice the 10.5mln euros that Lionel Messi, the almost unstoppable Argentina soccer attacking prodigy, currently receives at Barcelona.
One cannot help, but congratulate Eto’o — who, with the millions that he had previously amassed at his former wealthy clubs, along with the 60mln euros plus fringe benefits to be earned with this three-year contract with Russia’s Anji — is now in a more comfortable position to ensure that both the present and future generations of his extended family members have secure, hassles- lives, devoid of the traditional vagaries common to most Africans.
The fact that Kerimov is serious about his financial commitment to Anji is underscored by the names of famous players that have been brought to the club in record-breaking or record-matching deals. Only in this summer, Anji broke the Russian transfers market several times with each of its new signings. For instance, in plucking Yuri Zhirkov, the Russia international left mostly idle on Chelsea’s reserves bench, the club broke a personal paycheck record in Russia as it agreed 5mln euros as a seasonal wage with the player. Similarly, Balazs Dzsudzsak, a rising Hungarian soccer star with Eindhoven PSV, was lured from the Netherlands club at a record price.
However, prior to Eto’o, the most notable signing was Roberto Carlos, the renowned Brazilian defender, with a World Cup title and successful high-profile career at Real Madrid that was generously crowned with several Spanish national and UEFA Champions League titles. With such unlimited financial resources flowing effortlessly in Anji, it is no wonder the club, which only gained a promotion to the elite Russian Premier Soccer League not long ago, is among the national league leaders. With a readiness to spend generously, evident in his presenting a $2mln Bugatti Veyron to the Brazilian on his 38th birthday, and a promise to present the same car brand to each player should the club become a Russian champion in the next four years, it is fairly safe to assume that Kerimov is at Anji to stay and with a Napoleonic mission to put his native Dagestan on Europe’s clubs football map. Besides, with an array of world-class soccer stars displaying their skills during local and international league engagements in Russia, the local fans are now poised to see quality world-quality soccer that has not been seen in the country before.
However, skeptics doubt whether the billionaire’s soccer spending spree is directed at the right objectives, as these millions could have been spent more efficiently on resolving the grinding economic and social problems currently plaguing Dagestan, caught in perennial brutal violence that has made Russia’s North Caucasus one of the most hostile regions in the world. It is, indeed, this reality that forces Anji players to live and train not in Makhachkala, but at a sports facility outside Moscow, while only traveling to Dagestan for home games, flying several thousands kilometers 15 times a season, at a bill that also runs into millions of rubles.
But pumping these millions into solving economic and social problems in Dagestan — via creation of new jobs, sporting facilities, other social infrastructure projects and boosting security — would have helped reduce the region’s sky-high unemployment rate that is almost twice the national average, one of the key roots of all the social, political and economic discontent in the region. But this is not a job for just one businessman, even if he is a multibillionaire on Forbes’ global list, but a priority task for both the Dagestani and Russian federal governments. Compared to other Russian billionaires’ unjustified extravagancies and/or stashing of their vast wealth in all possible offshore havens across the globe, inaccessible to the Russian and international tax regulators, Kerimov’s ‘soccer mission’ in Russia does not deserve any criticism, but emulation by other oligarchs and appreciation from the local fans for cultivating world-class quality football in the country.
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