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I’m not much of a football (soccer) fan in general, but just watched an interesting breakdown of how FC Krasnodar (the only fully privately owned football club in Russia) just won the Premier League — beating out all the state-funded, teat-suckling teams propped up by taxpayer rubles.
For anyone interested, it has English subs
In a nutshell, almost all Russian football teams are state-sponsored or subsidized, as usual, they are good at sucking up money and not much else, unlike in the general West where clubs have to be commercially viable (even a small one like Real Bedford).
And a bit like Real Bedford, FC Krasnodar started small (but unlike Peter McCormack, it was founded by a supermarket mogul in 2008 and has no bitcoin connection). Now over the years, it's gone from the very bottom, right to the top.
Usually with Russian football teams, the moment there’s a change in politics and the state money goes, the team goes bust with it.
In contrast, the founder of FC Krasnodar built a long-term strategy around financial discipline, long-term talent development, and infrastructure investment. The club built one of the country’s most modern stadiums, Ozon Arena, with private capital and attracted record attendance, averaging over 27,000 fans per game.
They also built a youth academy to grow talent with elite athletic training and academics, including English language instruction and more. Nobody else is doing this in Russia.
FC Krasnodar is also killing it on merch and other deals, while the other state-backed clubs continue to operate in the red, shielded from market consequences by their political connections.
Now, usually in Russia, when a business gets juicy enough, there is a hostile takeover by someone with better political connections etc, that happens all the time, so I don’t know if that will happen here. Private business builds something awesome, and the state muscles in and ruins it (like Yandex).
Still, it is nice to see a business person with a vision and a plan drive forward and create something special that doesn't need state subsidies
Very cool. It reminds me off all the 19th century American entrepreneurs who defeated their subsidized competitors.
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something very satisfying about it
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reminds me of yashin
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Have Russian football clubs, or Russian sport in general, ever functioned differently? Definitely not before 1991. Krasnodar seems like an exception.
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i think they have always mostly been state-sponsored. One of the theories of why soviet athletes were so effective is that they had state support and were able to focus on being full-time athletes etc
Meanwhile, the US athletes had to balance their sports with full-time jobs.
This was also a theory John Dupont had - he thought elite American wrestlers didn’t get the support, resources, or recognition they deserved from the government or sports institutions.
So he personally started funding housing, training, and stipends for athletes who might otherwise struggle financially.
and then he went bat-shit crazy, killed one of them and developed a man crush on one of the Bulgarian wrestlers
and a few good docs on it (https://www.netflix.com/title/80044093)
course, in this case, it was just interesting that a private football team rose above the state ones, but as you say, historically Russia and, before that, the Soviet bloc did subsadize everything, all the way
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the Soviet bloc did subsadize everything, all the way
This, including doping, which played a huge role in achieving that “effectiveness” that you mentioned.
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yeah of course, but let's be honest, there wasn't a country not doping, the Russian state probably just took it to a different level.
did you see the doc about this? also very interesting. the guy in charge of the doping program became a whistleblower and is now in witness protection
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I did, yes. I also come from a country that has nothing to be ashamed of in this regard 🤣
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Classic story of incentives. When you remove market discipline, mediocrity thrives. FC Krasnodar basically proved that capitalism—when allowed—beats cronyism every time. But yeah… in Russia, success often paints a target on your back. Let’s hope football escapes that curse, even if tech didn’t.
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What a shocker. Private enterprise built and managed something much better than the state could even in an unfriendly political environment.
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