With the fact that in Russia they play a little, lately everyone seems to agree. Even football players, who are actually rather the opposite, tend to complain about fatigue and injuries. For example, the fresh opinion of 35-year-old Oleg Ivanov looks quite characteristic .
We actually play once a week. Relatively speaking, we get money for training, - Ivanov is quoted by Izvestia.
We are offered the idea of the RPL Cup - as an option to fill the program for the next season, where Russian football will be isolated from European cup tournaments.
The question swelled in a past life, familiar and measured. And in the life of the present, sanctions, he has matured completely. Because the European cups, having left our existence, released as many as 24 game slots in the calendar of the next season. Obviously, it is desirable to somehow fill them. The question is how.
One of the proposals that has been actively discussed recently is the RPL Cup.
Do not dissemble, the first reaction to the idea is wary. The third-ranked tournament has already appeared in domestic football - and disappeared just as suddenly. For the first time, the idea was implemented back in the late USSR - as the Federation Cup. And at the time of Russian independence, once, in 2003, the Premier League Cup was played. The main impression from those experiments is lightness.
Therefore, when the upcoming RPL Cup is now presented as our answer to the Champions League, for people with some football memory, this first of all causes an involuntary smile. And how else to react to an attempt to present the training of understudies under the guise of an intergalactic battle?
Although the success of an enterprise is determined, of course, not only by the memory of feelings. The key point is purpose. What do the founders want to achieve from their tournament?
Then, in the past, they wanted to get practice for the youth in those days when the national team gathered to prepare for their big matches. Therefore, the emotional halo around the tournament was appropriate. Once Valery Lobanovsky came up with the formula "training with increased responsibility" - it was something from that series.
Now, as far as one can understand, the message is completely different: the RPL Cup intends to take the place of the European Cups. And not only dates in the calendar - also, for example, earnings.
This, of course, is not about the same amounts - about the same principles. Each entry on the field, each point scored, each stage passed has a predetermined price. And the further the club moves along the tournament grid, the more money it earns.
Tournament ideologists represent such sums. The weakest team, which did not score a single point in the group, will receive 64 million rubles at the end, the winner of the cup - 184 million. It is worth emphasizing that the calculations are minimal, the worst case scenario. Otherwise, income can increase by one and a half to two times.
True, skeptics are not asleep. What income, what millions, do you watch TV at all? Not to fat, they say, today - to be alive. But we must understand that these figures were not fantasized by people from the street - they were calculated by top clubs. And it’s not the RFU that drives the new tournament with a stick - the participants themselves offer such an opportunity to earn. Wrong in forecasts - will receive less.
Although even if it is less, they will still earn. This is a benefit for the clubs.
The benefit of the fans is in the new batch of bright posters. The proposed format of the RPL Cup is a little ornate, but it is interesting in that the loser does not fly out immediately - which means that the strongest clubs are insured against chance. In terms of the quality of the game, this, of course, will not help to compare with the Champions League, but in terms of the level of attention of the audience, it is quite. When the giants in their best squads will seriously fight for victory, this will certainly find a response among the people. Our big clubs to the Russian public are no less interesting than European ones.
Finally, the RFU will also keep its interest. According to Oleksandr Dyukov , the new format of domestic competitions should at least preserve and, at the very least, raise the sporting level of our football. The tournament, where a series of new meetings of top clubs is laid down, in any case meets this task more fully than, say, the expansion of the RPL.
There is exactly a week before the fateful executive committee of the RFU - the meeting is scheduled for May 24. There it will become clear how Russian football will change next season.
Perhaps our desperate heads really dare to encroach on the throne of the Champions League. Let not in the class of the game - in the hype. And from such an attempt - whether it succeeds or not - our football will not lose in any case.