Russia is not a footballing country, the former trainer for the national side Leonid Slutsky infamously alleged in 2016.
His proof was simple: look at the poor attendance despite billions of rubles poured into new marquee arenas for Spartak and CSKA. “Earlier I was sure that new infrastructure would sharply change people’s relationship to football,” he told Sport Express. “But practice shows that I was wrong.”
One delirious World Cup and an estimated $14bn later, has anything changed?
One hundred days have passed since France won their first World Cup since 1998. Since then, league attendance is up somewhat, the striker Artem Dzyuba has become Russia’s unlikeliest cultural phenomenon and the football press is laser-focused on two prominent Russian footballers who went on a bender and assaulted a state television anchor’s driver and a government employee. Even the Kremlin has weighed in on their criminal trial.
