Alexander Dyukov came to the helm of Zenit just three years ago, but in his short time as president there have been almost as many victories and cups as there were in the whole history of the club previously. The list is impressive: the UEFA Cup, the UEFA Super Cup, Russian championships, Russian Cups, and Super Cups… The fans would say that Dyukov brings good luck to the team. But is that all? That’s too simple…
ZENIT IS THE CHAMPION! OF FINES TOO
— Mr. Dyukov, did you know that Zenit is already the champion?
— I can say more: the club will be champion until at least the spring of 2012, until the next winner of the Russian Premier League is decided, since this season will last a year and a half.
— By the way, what do you think about this season’s formula?
— That’s just temporary. The season has to be made that way in order to make the switch to the “fall – spring” calendar.
— But some people think that this formula will make life too easy on the big clubs, who will be satisfied just to be in the top 8 after this year, to then fight for the championship in the spring of 2012, and get places in European cup play. They can just take it easy for now.
— I don’t think it’s worth taking this threat seriously. We’re talking about professionals, who always have to take their work seriously.
— Actually, when I said that Zenit is the current champion, I meant… in terms of fines. You’ve already been fined for 900,000 rubles since the beginning of the season.
— Where did you get that figure? How did you count?
— Let’s check together. Three hundred thousand for exotic fruits at the stadium, for the banana shown to Roberto Carlos in the match vs. Anzhi. Two hundred thousand for the fans’ use of fireworks in the match vs. CSKA, and just as much for breaking the rules in the same game…
— OK, I got it! We try to be best in everything… Just kidding. Obviously, it’s always unpleasant to pay fines, no matter who you pay them to. Those are additional costs that will make trouble for any club, no matter what its financial status. But in this case, I think that we can speak of unfortunate coincidences, not about tendencies.
— But you have to agree that situations like the one with the banana have a bad influence on the club’s reputation.
— You know what, when you have so many thousands of people coming to the stadium, you’ll get various people. You can’t see inside every one of them. Such incidents don’t happen just in Petersburg. They happen in other cities, and in other countries. The important thing is the reaction to what happened. We pay close attention to such incidents, and the author of this dumb joke has already been punished for his stupidity: he lost his season ticket to Petrovsky Stadium and won’t be able to come to our team’s matches. I hope that will be a lesson not only for him. But nevertheless, we can’t judge all Zenit fans by the stupidity of one person.
THANKS, DAD
— Have you been a football fan for a long time, Mr. Dyukov?
— From as early as I can remember myself. From my earliest childhood, three or four years old.
— Thanks to your dad?
— Probably, just like the majority of young boys. Already back then people lived by Zenit — they watched the team, cheered for it. Naturally, my father tried to give me love for football.
— Do you remember the first time you went to the stadium?
— I think that was in 1974. Zenit played against Shaktar, and the match ended in a draw — 1:1. I went to the matches together with my father until I as 13, and then I went more often with my peers. I made monthly wages of 15 rubles when I was a teenager, and a ticket to the stadium might cost as little as 70 kopecks, depending on the sector. So the money I made was enough, and I didn’t have to ask my parents to pay for me.
— Do you remember Zenit winning the USSR Championship in 1984?
— Of course! Zenit lived by that title for more than two decades. Until our next gold medals.
— Did you go to away matches?
— WhileI was in school, no. Later, starting from the end of 1990s, I did.
— Are the fans from your youth very different from today’s fans?
— I wouldn’t say so. I would just say that the fan movement has become more organized and united.
— Question: around what ideas?
— I think around love for football and for the home team.
— Sometimes, along with hate for the opposition.
— By definition, fans can’t be objective. Ya, sometimes the fans get too emotional. That happens today, but it happened before too.
— Have you ever been in fights with fans from other teams?
— Let’s say like this, I never fought with fans of other teams, but I did have to talk to the police. Earlier the police could detain you for anything at the stadium, without giving an explanation. It was enough to have a team scarf or flag.
— And you got detained yourself?
— Ya, it happened. The police rounded up our whole group of fans before a match with CSKA and let us go only an hour after the match ended. The reason was that we were wearing Zenit scarves. I didn’t have one, but I was taken together with the rest of my friends who refused to take off their scarves… I was in ninth grade then.
— Did the police call your school?
— Thankfully, no. Everything was alright.
IT’S NOT BEER THAT RUINS PEOPLE
— How often do you speak with Zenit fans now?
— We have planned meetings before and after the season, and during the season I speak with them in emergency cases. Our team has a lot of fans. Both in Petersburg, and in Moscow…
— Apparently Dmitry Medvedev is the head of the Zenit fan club in the Kremlin. Did you talk about that when you brought the UEFA Cup to the Kremlin in 2008?
— We didn’t talk about that. Mr. Medvedev said he’s happy whenever Russian sportsmen win, although I think he was twice as happy that a team from his home city won…
Our regular fans and our more famous ones are equally important to us. We always try to find out what they think of the team, and do all we can to make comfortable conditions for Zenit fans at matches.
— How does that go?
— We work hard! For example, to ease the procedure of checking fans when entering the stadium. We work with the police to make the procedure as comfortable as possible, while remembering that safety is a key question. Or, let’s say, earlier fans complained that the food at Petrovsky wasn’t good, but now that problem is in the past.
— They even sell beer at the stadium!
— It seems like we were the first and the last in Russia to try that experiment. A year has gone by and nothing bad has happened. The number of drunk people and incidents involving them hasn’t increased at Petrovsky Stadium. Of course it takes time for fan culture to develop, but Zenit has the kinds of fans that other clubs can only dream about.
EVERY MAN HAS HIS OWN TASTES
— But in a different area things haven’t changed at all.
— In which one?
— The thesis that “There’s no color black in Zenit” is still real today.
— That’s just folklore! Zenit doesn’t have any such motto.
— Naturally. But everybody knows what this is about. The club has never had any African or other dark-skinned players. Maybe that just happens by accident, but it looks like a tendency.
— First of all, let me say that we had a dark-skinned player in our Academy, although he was born in St. Petersburg. The fans accepted him absolutely normally. But the problem isn’t even about that. We’re not going to buy a player or put a player on the field just because of his skin color, just to prove something. That’s stupid!
— Nevertheless, Petrzela insists that in his reign as Zenit coach there was a prohibition on buying players of color.
— I’m not going to discuss the words of a person who worked before my time in the club. But you can ask Advocaat or Spalletti if they had any limitations on buying players based on geographical or skin color attributes. There was no such thing and never will be. We’ll find a footballer who suits Zenit’s style of play, agree on the price, and take him. No doubt about it. Nobody is going to pay attention to nationality or religious confession. It’s just a question of selecting the right players, and nothing more.
— That’s good if it’s like that. But 2018 is ahead, and the closer it comes, the more the international community is going to look for any signs of racism in Russia, in order to show the country in a bad light.
— I can say for sure that a lot of attention is paid in the club to this topic. We always take part in anti-racist campaigns under the aegis of FIFA and UEFA, and consistently conduct lessons in tolerance for other peoples in city schools. Our coaches and players give these lessons. The club has developed a special anti-racist program. This isn’t a one-time event, it’s a cycle of events in which we will definitely include our fans. Day by day, month by month...
— But one banana can ruin all the positive momentum gained over a whole year. A classic case of a fly in the ointment…
— There’s no reason to put responsibility for such a serious problem on the shoulders of football clubs. The state should work on this question first of all. Probably it’s time to toughen the legislation, changing it to make serious punishment for any nationalistic statements or kindling race hate. And there needs to be real jail time. Maybe, at that point, people will become more responsible with their words and actions. For now the normative base isn’t tough enough.
CALL ME
— Do a lot of employees in the club have your phone number?
— Any employee who needs it for their work has it. And I have the numbers of practically all managers in the company, and our coaches and players.
— Who do you speak to most often among the footballers?
— I would say with Alexander Anyukov. As the team captain.
— Do you go to the Udelny Park practice facility often?
— I go there once a month. People work, train, so why should I distract them with my presence? Usually I meet the people in the team before evening matches, and we have supper together before the match.
— Where does that take place?
— In the hotel where the team goes the day before matches. Under Advocaat that was at Kempinski. Now it’s in Nevskij Palace. Everything depends on who our business partner is at the current moment. We try to economize…
MONEY IN YOUR POCKET
— Impressive! In Moscow everybody thinks that Zenit has as much money as it wants. Gazprom is standing behind the club, with its pockets open!
— Russian Railways is standing behind Lokomotiv. They’re not to poor either. LUKoil is standing behind Spartak.
— But the team owner is Leonid Fedun.
— You can find him his name in the Forbes list too…
— Whatever the case, there are hardly any really private clubs in Russia. There are some lucky teams that are supported by state corporations, and a tight group of dependents who are fed from regional budgets. Maybe it’s time to make the playing field equal for all clubs?
— You can’t solve this problem in one sitting. The process should go in its own natural way. You named Fedun, but you should also mention Giner and CSKA, and Kerimov, who took Anzhi under his wing. And a newcomer: Krasnodar, financed by Galitsky. Changes are happening slowly, and there have been positive changes, but you can’t change everything at once… Over time, I’m sure that all clubs will quit the practice of receiving financing from the regional budget, but let’s not forget that football serves a social function in the regions as well. It’s in Moscow and Petersburg that there are no problems finding entertainment. Sometimes there’s only one outlet in the provinces — supporting their favorite team, going to the stadium. How can you deny people this pleasure?
— But can’t the budgets at least be made transparent? What prevents Zenit from showing its financial figures, its incomes, its costs, its salaries?
— If the Russian Football Union and the Russian Premier League take such a decision that all clubs have to follow, then we’re ready. Really, it’s not such a secret, because people who work with football know all the numbers anyway. As for salaries, their contracts often have a point preventing information of this type to be disclosed to the public. That’s entirely logical. People want to keep confidentiality over their own earnings.
