MOSCOW, October 27. /TASS/. Russian national football team’s Head Coach Fabio Capello implements all his duties under the contract although there has been a significant delay in his salary payments, Nikolai Tolstykh, the president of the Russian Football Union (RFU), said on Monday.

Capello, who is not in Russia at the moment, has not been paid under his contract with the Russian Football Union (RFU) for over four months. According to various media reports, the RFU’s current debt to the Italian coach stands at some 250 million rubles (over $6 million).

“As an employee he fully implements all his obligations undertaken with the RFU,” Tolstykh told journalists adding that the Italian manager had been recently making a lot of trips abroad.

“This is also because he travels to see footballers, who are playing for the teams that are competitors for Russia,” Tolstykh added.

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 severe 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.