The cup match between Dynamo and Krylya Sovetov turned out to be fun, and the result was unexpected: the Samara team sent the blue-and-whites to the Road of Regions, while they themselves continue to fight for the trophy in the upper draw. . More than 6,500 spectators watched the former Orenburg Sychevy, and now Krylya Sovetov’s Pisarsky’s goal, a petulantly executed penalty and the ball from another young Dynamo star, Yaroslav Gladyshev, restored hope to the hosts.
Someone will say that there were few spectators, but it was only March 1, the temperature was below zero, and the match itself had friendly elements, because both teams still remain in the tournament. It is clear that the RFU changed the format of the Cup to fill the gap after Russia was no longer allowed to compete in European competition. On the one hand, this is good, on the other hand, many matches become transient from a tournament point of view.
But the fans in the stands practically said goodbye, although they believed that they would meet again in the Cup. It will no longer work in championship matches, because now entry there is only with a fan ID or “fan go away” as football fans called it. I don’t claim to be a sociological study, but everyone I talked to over the break won’t write a paper for a reason: No one explained to them why it’s necessary. In this situation, club bonuses, bonuses and discounts do not work, because they cannot motivate, but can only support the existing motivation.
The fans caught the freedom of the cup not only in Moscow. For example, in Yekaterinburg in the cold at the game “Ural” with “Rostov” there were more than 9,500 spectators. There, the fan-ID works from the beginning of the season, so it can already be compared with the RPL. So, on November 6 last year, 3,500 fans were counted in the stands at the Ural championship match with Lokomotiv. Feel the difference, as they say, for yourself.
At the same time, according to official data, more than 450,000 fan passports have been issued in Russia. In the Sverdlovsk region alone, there are 37.5 thousand. But this is something else: in the Nizhny Novgorod region, for example, 75 thousand people received the cherished documents. Where are all these people? At the last match of last year, 4133 spectators came to the stadium in the city on the Volga, the occupancy of the arena was 9%.
Sources at two RPL clubs said these figures are not to be taken seriously. The fact is that a fan-id was requested to receive “everyone”, normally officials and employees of the State, it was not necessary for them to go to football, it was important to test the system that, by the way, continues to work badly. . Therefore, it will not be surprising that some soccer player does not receive a FAN ID (yes, they need it too!). Private Igor Diveev has already told how he barely managed to get a fan ID before the game in Nizhny Novgorod, because the first attempt ran into a system glitch.
If you are interested, in Moscow, with all the “samples”, 46 thousand fan IDs were issued, together with the Moscow region – 67 thousand for six teams. But here, apparently, the officials were not very enthusiastic about controlling the system, and therefore the numbers seem plausible. As well as in Saint Petersburg, where 29,000 documents have been issued, which is not enough to occupy half of the seats in the stadium.
It is completely predictable that we will see 3-5 thousand fans at regular matches and 6-8 thousand at top matches. And this despite the fact that the stadiums themselves, which hosted the World Cup matches, have no capacity for less than 40 thousand. Now as much or a little more the eight games of the tour will be seen live.
Then a logical question arises: why play in these new settings? The clubs will simply not recover their costs and everything will have to be recorded as a loss. Also, the head coach of “Rostov” Valery Karpin, for example, says that the big arena has a bad field. It is logical, it turns out, to transfer games to the antediluvian Olympus XXI. Why would Torpedo play at Luzhniki?
Already in the next weekend we will see a very sad attendance at the RPL matches, you can be sure. And the number of fan IDs received by fans under current conditions is unlikely to increase significantly precisely due to the lack of explanations about who needs them and why.
The World Cup is often cited as an example, in the matches of which they were not allowed to play without a shiny passport around their neck. But first, it had free travel on game day on public transport and inter-city trains. Secondly, to see Messi live there were more people who wanted to become a fan-id than we see now to see Dziuba live.
Also, we will never get an explanation why it is necessary to get a fan ID for the RPL, and it is not needed for the Russian Cup until the final. Also, when Russia returns to European competition, no additional documents will be required for entries there either, including due to guest quotas for fans.
Therefore, by the day the championship resumed, the fans had not received an answer to a single question that had been asked since the day the law on fan identification was introduced in the Duma, and the Sports Ministry, RPL and RFU did. They don’t even have forecast numbers for viewers, because no one knows how many people just tried the system at the request of the authorities.
Clubs in such a situation need to plan their budgets, moreover, in a very difficult time, when every ruble counts. Unfortunately, they don’t have the resources to influence the situation, because here we are talking about the rules of federal law. Its revision requires a serious political will for nothing from those who are in charge of domestic football.
