Oligarch sets tough goals for Dagestan team

A Russian oligarch is bidding to transform an obscure football team in a war-torn region of the country into a world-renowned club. His formula: a €1bn checkbook, two suave English-speaking managers, and Cameroonian football star Samuel Eto’o, now the highest-paid player in the world.

Suleiman Kerimov, a billionaire from Russia’s poor and unruly Dagestan region, is not only hoping to bring his scrappy hometown club Anzhi into Europe’s Champions League. He also plans to bring stability to a region where 53 law enforcement officers have been killed so far this year, and ties to Islamic radicalism run strong.

“The Anzhi project, which is absolutely long-term, has two equivalent aims: one sports-related and one social,” Mr Kerimov says.

So far, Anzhi has made strides on the athletic front. Since Mr Kerimov was handed the club by Dagestan’s local government in January in exchange for promising to invest, the businessman has gone on a buying spree to acquire some of the world’s most famous footballers. They include Roberto Carlos, Yuri Zhirkov and Mr Eto’o, who reportedly signed a €60m ($86m) three-year contract with Anzhi this week.

Following the acquisitions, the team soared from an 11th place finish in Russia’s premier league at the end of last season to fourth place.

The turnround has been keenly felt in Dagestan, where the team has become a national obsession.

“Every match is sold out, tickets are bought up in two days, and thousands of fans are left waiting out in the street because the stadium is small,” says German Chistyakov, Anzhi’s general manager who is credited with creating a new public image for the team. Mr Chistyakov has orchestrated events such as a multi-faith day of prayer for the team in Makhachkala, Dagestan’s capital. The team has already sold out of its first batch of Samuel Eto’o team shirts.

“Everyone in Dagestan only talks about Anzhi now,” says Ramazan Gaziev, a Makhachkala resident who founded Anzhi’s fan club “The Wild Division” in 2008. “It is the main conversation topic at home and at work, even among people who didn’t know anything about football before.”

On Friday he and 300 supporters drove 20 hours to see the game in Rostov and catch a glimpse of Mr Eto’o for the first time.

Mr Gaziev believes football will give locals in Dagestan a “common language” – a view that could be considered naive. Yet at least it will give them jobs. Mr Kerimov plans to build “Anzhi City”, which will border Makhachkala on the Caspian Sea and include facilities ranging from a 45,000-seater stadium to training grounds and tourist accommodation, including five-star hotels.

“For Dagestan unemployment is a big problem and one of the factors that’s influencing the minds of young people,” says Sergei Rasulov, a local journalist.

People with no prospects come under the influence of religious propaganda and join the Islamic radicals hiding out in Dagestan’s forests, he says.

While early enthusiasm for the project remains strong, there are concerns that Anzhi’s turnround will be shortlived. Alexei Malashenko, an expert on the Caucasus at the Carnegie Moscow Center, notes this is not the first time Russia has used football as a tool for regional politics.

In the Soviet Union, Ukraine’s Zarya Lugansk team was briefly turned into a Soviet champion under the direct orders of Ukrainian-born Leonid Brezhnev. Dagestan itself was previously home to Dinamo Makhachkala, another would-be star team.

More recently in neighbouring Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, a local strongman, has been trying to pull off a similar feat with Terek Grozny football club, but with worse results.

In the past nine months, the team has lost two coaches, Ruud Gullit from the Netherlands and Victor Muñoz from Spain, while big-name acquisitions have been no help in getting the team out of the second half of the premier league.

Ivan Kalashnikov, deputy editor of Sports.ru, a popular sports news site, says a separate worry is that Anzhi may simply end up being a passing fancy for its owner, noting a previous short-lived investment by the oligarch in boxing.

So far, Mr Kerimov has approached his investment with gusto, personally wooing some of Anzhi’s big-name players and, according to press reports, lavishing Mr Carlos with a Bugatti car and an extravagant birthday party in Moscow, where the team is training while it waits for the new stadium to be built.

But many questions linger about whether Mr Kerimov can actually pull off Anzhi’s transformation and how much impact it can actually have on Dagestan. In the meantime, says Mr Rasulov: “It’s a big celebration.”