MOSCOW, December 23. /TASS/. Russia’s labor watchdog Rostrud said in a statement on its website on Tuesday that it has allowed the Russian Football Union (RFU) to postpone by one month wage arrears payment to Italian head coach of the Russian national football team Fabio Capello.
The announcement came after Rostrud, or the Federal Agency for Labor and Employment, received a relevant request motivated by the decision by the Executive Committee of Russia’s governing football body to establish an anti-crisis committee to stabilize the financial situation of the RFU.
Capello and Oreste Cinquini, the Russian football team’s general manager, have been unpaid for six months. According to the results of an inspection carried out last month by Rostrud, the debt stood at 181.5 million rubles ($3.3 million at current rates), which had to be repaid within a month, that is by December 19.
“On December 19, Rostrud’s territorial body in the city of Moscow considered a written request by the all-Russian public organization ‘Russian Football Union’ to postpone the implementation of an earlier issued order to repay wage arrears,” the statement said.
“The request was motivated by the RFU Executive Committee’s decision to establish an anti-crisis committee to stabilize the financial situation of the Russian Football Union, as well as the necessity for the RFU leadership to turn to lending agencies to repay the debt,” it said.
“The decision was made to extend until January 19, 2015 the deadline for implementation of an earlier issued order to repay the debt,” the statement said.
The RFU is currently experiencing financial difficulties and its budget deficit totals 500 million rubles ($9.1 million). Following the session of the RFU’s Executive Committee earlier last week, Nikolai Tolstykh, the president of the union, said that an anti-crisis committee was to be set up to tackle the financial difficulties of the organization.
The Russian national squad experienced a string of setbacks over the past decade failing to qualify for the 2006 World Cup in Germany and 2010 championship in South Africa to the great dismay of the Russian football fans.
Things changed, however, when Italian phenomenon Capello took over the team as the head coach and managed to help the Russian national squad to qualify for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
The team, however, failed to clear the first stage of the much-anticipated global tournament putting their coach in the center of stern criticism and raising serious concerns in the country about the team’s performance in the next World Cup, which would be hosted by Russia in 2018.
However, Russia did not sever the contract with Capello after the Russian team’s performance at the World Cup in Brazil and the Italian manager also decided to stay with the Russian squad as the head coach until the year of 2018 as stipulated by the contract terms.
The country won the bid to host the 2018 World Cup almost four years ago in a tight race against the joint bid from England, Portugal and Spain and the joint bid on behalf of Belgium and the Netherlands.
Russia selected 11 host cities to be the venues for the matches of the 2018 World Cup and they are Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, Kazan, Saransk, Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Samara.
The matches of the 2018 World Cup will be held at 12 stadiums located in the 11 mentioned above cities across Russia. Two of the stadiums are located in the Russian capital.