Over the past week, Moscow Spartak has again delighted the audience with loud news. First, after the away defeat to Sochi (0: 1), there was a scandal with the head coach of the red and white Domenico Tedesco. He came into conflict in the under-stands with Sochi goalkeeping coach Dmitry Borodin and accused him of racism. And during the game he showed banknotes, after the match he asked the goalkeeper of the opposing team “How much money?” Many took this as an allusion to bribery of judges. Although the representatives of “Spartak” deny such a context in the words of the coach. On Wednesday, after the defeat to Zenit (0: 1), Tedesco announced that he would not renew his contract with Spartak, which expires at the end of May. Izvestia talked about these events with the ex-president of the club, Andrei Chervichenko.
– Were you surprised at Tedesco’s announcement of leaving Spartak?
– I think it was an emotional step. Still, recent results have been unfortunate. And the last scandal during the match in Sochi suggested that this was happening for a reason. Still, Tedesco, for all his emotionality, is not an easy guy. He does many things consciously. In particular, a statement after the match with Zenit about the imminent departure. I do not exclude that he is a message to the Spartak leadership, so that they can trust him more in terms of transfers. Still, in the previous summer window, he was not free in this matter. If the red and white agree to his terms, then I think Domenico can stay. After all, it is far from certain that he will now find the same high-paying job in Europe.
– In the meantime, everything goes to the fact that Spartak will have to urgently look for a new coach.
– Well, this is not the first time that someone in the club is hysterical. And another revolution is taking place, over which people from outside are already laughing. We did not have time to move away from the strange dismissal of Shamil Gazizov from the post of general director. And they have just begun to observe the strange movements in relation to Alexander Kokorin, who, it seems, they want to remove from Spartak. How else does a collapse happen in the coaching issue? On the other hand, no wonder. This is not the first and not the last time in Spartak.
– What do you expect from the RFU Control and Disciplinary Committee, which postponed the consideration of the incident with Tedesco in Sochi?
– The postponement of the decision is similar to nonsense, but we understand that Spartak is behaving hysterically. So that this hysteria did not receive the resonance that was at the beginning of the championship about the refereeing, the FTC decided to postpone the decision, since a negative result of the match with Zenit would intensify this hysteria many times over. Spartak fans would say that St. Petersburg specially organized this in order to keep the lead in such a dishonest way. In reality, in my opinion, there is nothing to analyze here. The situation itself is bullshit. Just the words of one person against the words of another person: Tedesco against Borodin.
– There are no reasons for proceedings?
– Since Tedesco made a statement, then this, of course, needs to be checked. But so far I see only one actually proven incident – this is how the head coach of “Spartak” asked Dzhanaev how much money they gave, and before that he showed a gesture depicting banknotes. I never saw or heard anything else. Therefore, it is almost impossible to confirm or deny the correctness of Tedesco or Borodin. You can perceive this situation only based on how they present it. Borodin says one thing, Tedesco says something completely different. In this situation, I am more inclined to believe Borodin, because I recently spoke with Tedesco personally. And I don’t think that his level of knowledge of the Russian language is such that he can understand directly everything that Borodin says.
– Borodin himself admitted that the phrase that hurt Tedesco, pronounced in English.
– Yes, but the same Dmitry said that he also does not know English that well. Therefore, we generally cannot state unequivocally what was meant. And are there any problems here simply in the difficulties of translation, when one does not know Russian enough, and the other is not so good at English. At the same time, even in the version voiced by Tedesco, I do not see any xenophobia, Nazism or racism. There was no hint of Domenico’s ethnicity or nationality. And I do not even see that there was any derogatory touch in this phrase of Borodin. The fact that Tedesco works on our land is a fact. And we have nothing against – we are only for competition from foreign specialists. You just have to behave decently. I think in England for such tantrums that Tedesco rolls on the edge and in the under-stands room, they would be immediately disqualified for more than one or two matches. And I don’t remember that Domenico behaved like that when he worked in the German championship.
– FTC RFU explained the postponement of the decision on Tedesco by the need to write a request to FARE (organization “Football against racism in Europe”) with a request to assess the words of Borodin.
– This is a completely wrong position. Here you have to respect yourself. And not to react to publications of Western media, especially German ones, which, as we can see, [общественный деятель Алексей] Navalny dies three times a year. And if all this is disassembled and explained, then you can generally drown in your own excuses. It seems to me that we need to react toughly within the legal framework. Jumped Tedesco for five games of suspension – ban him for five matches. Broke something else for three games – add them, let it be eight. Arranged a riot in the under-stands room – disqualify again. And this should be the case for all coaches – both ours and foreign ones. The tougher we act, the more respect we will be from foreigners who come to Russia to earn millions. And it is somehow wrong to make excuses for following the laws before the West. Even if their media podvyak something. Because I personally understand that they only listen to Tedesco’s version. They do not ask Borodin, they do not hear his position. This is a hypocritical and two-faced approach. And we sometimes try to play along with this, as in the case of kneeling.
– Are you talking about the behavior of some Krasnodar players in the match against Chelsea?
– Yes. I give credit to those guys who refused to do this. But I don’t understand those who did this. Sorry, but the problem of racism is far from a Russian issue. We have never used or sold Africans as slaves. This is a purely American and European story. And I wonder why we should apologize to them. Let us now force every foreigner who comes to us to repent before the former serfs, although serfdom was abolished almost 160 years ago.