Valeri Gazzaev – creator and destroyer of his own dynasty.
Valeri Gazzaev is a hero in Vladikavkaz, and rightly so. In 1995, having already made his name known with a respectable goalscoring record in the 70s, Gazzaev led Spartak-Alania to the Russian Top League title, unexpectedly breaking the hegemony of Oleg Romanstev’s Spartak side with the unfashionable North Ossetian club.
The scale of the achievement can be seen in the fact that, barring a second place finish in the following season, Alania have never broken back into the top five of the Russian league, let alone seriously challenged for the title. It was the sort of league win which is simply unthinkable in the globalised, money-driven modern game – his only foreigners were four Georgians, two Azeris, two Kazakhs and an Uzbek, a far cry from the multi-national squads of today’s league.
Alania’s title win took Russia by surprise.
As an event, it launched Gazzaev to managerial superstardom within Russia. He stayed at a slowly declining Alania until the turn of the millennium before taking Dinamo from 5th to 9th in his two years in charge, but his reputation alone was sufficient for him to handed the reins at CSKA, his task to revitalise the army club and bring some silverware to their long-empty trophy cabinet.
The rest, as they say, is history. Sporting an iconic moustache and a team which would go on to be one of the most successful in CSKA history, he led the Muscovites to three title, three cup wins, three Super Cups and, as icing on the cake, the 2005 UEFA Cup, made all the more special by winning in the back yard of opponents Sporting Lisbon.
However, one-off games aside, the last title Gazzaev won remains the 2006 league and cup double. Departing from the army side in 2008 after Rubin’s maiden title win, he was coaxed to Dynamo Kyiv only to leave quickly, failing to wrest the title from a dominant Shakhtar Donetsk. With apparently little demand for his services – save for nostalgic CSKA fans – Gazzaev’s options were restricted to the stage that he moved upstairs at Alania in 2010, his managerial career apparently over as he adapted to life in the presidential seat.
The UEFA Cup remains CSKA’s biggest triumph.
The more critical eye would, at this stage, begin to question the abilities of the Vladikavkaz native. Instead of using his reputation to attract the finest managerial talent to Spartak stadium, he instead fell foul of nepotism accusations, appointing his son Vladimir, with no previous experience, to the Alania dugout.
Promotion from the First Division followed, albeit in second place behind Mordovia with arguably the strongest squad in the division. Yet when a failure to adequately strengthen led to Alania being cut adrift at the foot of the Premier League, Gazzaev senior saw it as an opportunity to return to the limelight, casting himself as the hero in the Vladikavkaz soap opera. In came Royston Drenthe and returning hero Georgi Gabulov, a win over Mordovia gave the fans a modicum of hope, and yet by the end of the season all was in vain. In a move loaded with a sense of Gazzaev’s own self-importance, his son was once again moved into the hotseat.
To his credit, the younger Gazzaev has learned from his lessons, taking Alania back to the summit of the second tier as favourites for promotion. Tamas Priskin’s hat-trick on his return to the side saw them stroll to victory over Gazovik Orenburg on Monday, and all seemed well in the Caucasian foothills.
Tamas Priskin has been a consistent threat up front for Alania since signing.
Then came the revelations – Alania’s players have not been paid for four months, there is little money in the bank, the sponsorship deal which saved them from Premier League withdrawal has been cut short by a massive seven years, and there is little contingency. Should a sponsor not be found by the end of November, the club will cease to exist.
How much Gazzaev is responsible is unclear, but as club president and inextricably linked with all key decisions at the club, he must shoulder a large portion of the responsibility for RusHydro’s disappearance and Alania’s impending doom. Whilst the public announcement of the situation smacked of a PR-coated appeal for sponsorship, there are other areas in which Gazzaev has undoubtedly let his hometown team down.
The most high-profile of these has been his very public involvement in the organisation of the proposed United Championship involving clubs from both Russia and Ukraine, in an attempt to recreate something akin to the old Soviet League. Having been lured in by the promise of Gazprom’s billions and fantastical estimates as to TV audiences and sponsorship deals, Gazzaev has been the figure head whose job it has been to deliver the far-fetched promises to the footballing community and general public. Whilst in itself the idea is not without merit, the manner in which Gazzaev has carried out his task – at times appearing to be throwing more energy into the United Championship than Alania, and hosting a multitude of meetings with clubs from both countries – could certainly be seen as a conflict of interests, particularly as Alania would be unlikely to benefit from being dropped into the second or third tier of such a competition.
The RusHydro partnership was supposed to save Alania.
Secondly, and somewhat less concretely, involves the negotiation of the RusHydro sponsorship deal, believed to have tied the two parties together until 2020. How much Gazzaev brought to the negotiating table is unclear, but with the North Ossetian regional government failing to allocate funds for the team – commonplace in the Russian game – the deal effectively allowed Alania to last the Premier League season. What the club, and possibly Gazzaev, failed to take into account, was that – if some sources are to be believed – the deal was conditional on the side remaining in the top flight. Other sources do not include such detail, but mention that RusHydro themselves are now enduring financial difficulties, suggesting that the last-ditch salvation plan may actually prove the nail in the coffin for all parties.
Finally, and most clearly, is the issue of Alania’s transfer policy. In the depths of the Russian winter, with relegation a distinct possibility, Alania spent big in an attempt to claw back the points deficit accrued in a miserable first half of the campaign. Alongside high-profile Dutchman Drenthe and former captain Gabulov, returning from Anzhi, a number of other faces found themselves drawn to Vladikavkaz by the wages on offer. In came promising Bosnian full back Ognen Vranjes from Krasnodar, and in the most surprising move of the window, highly-rated Renan Bressan, the naturalised Brazilian arriving from Belarusian champions BATE Borisov.
The moves were supposed to inspire the club to survival, and when Drenthe netted a hat-trick against Mordovia, they briefly threatened to do so. However, Gabulov disappointed, Vranjes could make little difference at the back, Drenthe blew hot and cold, while Bressan failed to live up the promise which saw him grab a goal every other game from the BATE midfield. Relegation came, and comfortably.
Renan Bressan has so far failed to recapture his BATE form.
Instead of cutting back over the summer, Alania persisted with the bulk of the multi-national squad which took them down. Among the big earners not previously mentioned are Brazilian forward Danilo Neco, ex-Watford man Priskin and Ivorian Dacosta Goore. One or two names were forced to leave, but Alania remain a First Division club on Premier League wages. While local talent – the likes of first team regulars Gabulov, Dmitri Khomich, Zaurbek Pliev, Aslan Dudiev and captain Taras Tsarikaev – is given a chance, the experienced Ossetians are earning too much for their status, living comfortably as a result of their indispensable status within the club.
As president and occasional manager, Gazzaev has to take responsibility for what can only read as reckless financial policy, particularly when the club was known to be struggling off the field. While Alania sit top of the pile at the moment, they do so on the back of a playing budget which is three times that of third place Arsenal Tula, who sit just five points behind after working miracles under ex-Spartak man Dmitri Alenichev, and six above Shinnik Yaroslavl, who themselves were forced to make sizable cuts last season after losing in the promotion play-offs the year before. With their budget, they should be taking the league by storm.
Whether Gazzaev knew of RusHydro’s problems or not, either option represents an area in which the president can be seen to be negligent in his care. His work with the United Championship has robbed the club as their figurehead at crucial times, and his transfer and wages policy would appear to fly in the face of logic. Whilst other less public figures are undoubtedly at fault, it is hard to see how Gazzaev cannot take some of the blame.
Gazzaev’s double appointment of son Vladimir raised plenty of questions.
The reasoning behind it is a difficult one to stomach, but the facts appear to draw the conclusion that the one-time miracle worker’s best days are well behind him. Making a fight of the Premier League with Alania now is of course far removed form his mid-90s heyday, but by refusing to let go of past glories, denying the obvious signs that Alanis are a club in decline, and ignoring the club’s acutely limited resources in pursuit of past glories, he may have taken a larger role than he would want to admit in taking the once proud side to the brink of oblivion.
Of course, it would not be the first time Alania have experienced financial meltdown, having dropped all the way to the regional leagues as recently as 2006 for irregularities in their books. On that occasion they bounced back, proving themselves too big a club for the Second Division.
The question that will need to be asked this time, should the unthinkable happen and the club fold a second time, is whether or not they are too big for the First Division any more. Given the events of the past few years and their constant struggles both on and off the field, the sad answer for fans, romantics and Valeri Gazzaev would seem to be a categoric ‘no.’
If money isn’t found by November 26th, Alania may cease to exist.
