Ever since the 11-time Soviet champions Dinamo Moscow were penalized for breaching UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regulations last summer, the Blue-Whites have been in constant turmoil.
Last season infamously ended in Dinamo leaving the top flight for the first time in the club’s 93-year history, and this season the proud Moscow side have been demoted to the deep seas of the Football National League (FNL), the second tier, where clubs constantly struggle to stay above water.
There were those who were optimistic on Dinamo’s behalf last year, as their firesale gave room to a number of promising, young Russian talents such as Roman Zobnin, Grigoriy Morozov, and Aleksandr Tashaev. However, instead of the Blue-Whites returning rejuvinated to the Premier League, the club is now in bigger troubles than ever before.
As it has been pointed out elsewhere, bankruptcy is now looming over Dinamo as the disastrous financial management of Boris Rotenberg Sr. keeps haunting the Blue-Whites.
Earlier today, Dinamo turned down an invitation for the traditional winter tournament, the FNL Cup, for financial reasons. The cup is played between February 11 and 24 in Cyprus, and serves as the final preparation for the FNL sides before the kick off of the second half of the season.
In 2015, VTB Bank signed a sponsorship deal with the club worth of €62.8m, but just a little over a year later, the club budget has been sliced significantly, and from the beginning of 2017, it will take another major hit as the current deal runs out in December, something that was recently confirmed by the Chairman of the Dinamo Sports Society Vladimir Strzhalkovskiy after a board meeting at the club.
However, the sponsorship problems remains only a fraction of Dinamo’s problems. Clubs such as FC Rostov last season and Amkar Perm this season have shown that it is possible to finish in the top half without having the financial muscles of the clubs from Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Dinamo’s biggest problem is the massive amount of debt they have built in the years of over-spending. Despite last season’s firesale, the debt is currently around €140m, and the club have few assets left to cash in on. In fact, the debt keeps building up, primarily due to an excessive wage bill. Russian international Igor Denisov, for example, is still on the books at Dinamo on a deal worth €5m per year, although Lokomotiv Moscow are currently paying half of this, while goalkeeper Anton Shunin signed a new contract worth of €1.6m annually in January.
Dinamo currently lead the FNL after collecting 50 points in their first 22 games, but despite the success on the pitch, promotion is anything but certain at this point due to the constant problems off the pitch, and at the end of the season Dinamo could end up taking a step down rather than up no matter their standing in the table.
Author: Toke Møller Theilade
Brøndby supporter, groundhopper and more importantly Editor-in-Chief at Russianfootballnews.com. As a hopeless romantic, I still believe Fyodor Smolov and Viktoria Lopyreva has a future together.
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