The curious tale of Anzhi Makhachkala

Lurking amongst the football gossip columns in recent months, alongside the stellar names of the English Premier League, La Liga and Serie A, has been a relative newcomer to football’s A List. A club whose name is as difficult to pronounce as it is to comprehend how their story and background can be linked to the players and ambitions they are. But then again, Anzhi Makhachkala are no other club.

Anzhi rose to prominence in football circles when they announced the signing of Cameroon international striker Samuel Eto’o in August of last year. The most surprising aspect of the transfer, however, wasn’t just the fact that an internationally renowned striker would chose to move to one of the traditionally less glamorous European leagues. It was more the fact that a seemingly unknown Russian side had the financial wealth to furnish Internazionale with €21m (£18.4m) and Eto’o with an annual salary of around €10m (£8.7m).

Eto'o earns a reputed £167,825 a week at Anzhi

The man behind the club and the financial power that has provided the gossip columns with numerous unheralded and spurious rumours in the past six months is oil tycoon Suleiman Kerimov. Kerimov, a 45 year-old Russian who stand in 118th position on the Forbes billionaires list, has made his fortune from investing in failing oil companies and later selling them on for huge profits, and more recently from capitalising on the financial meltdown that hit Russia in 2008.

Kerimov was born in Derbent, Dagestan, a birthright that has forged a relationship with local side Anzhi. The side, who currently sit seventh in the Russian Premier League, are based in the notoriously unsafe Dagestan Republic, an ethnically diverse area in the North Caucasus region of South-West Russia. The area, as excellently described by Rossiyskaya Gazeta’s Anna Nemtsova, is rife with low-level guerrilla war, a complicated and painful conflict marked by suicide bombings, the assassination of police, mayors and religious leaders, and the abduction and murder of peaceful Muslims. 

Anzhi has only existed on the Russian football scene since 1991, and were accustomed to floundering around the 1. Division with only sporadic flirtations with the Premier League for three seasons from 2000, until their promotion back to the top flight in 2010. Kerimov purchased the club in January 2011, and his arrival heralded a major shift in the club’s targets, both on and off the field.

His acquisition of the club has led to suggestions that his role at Anzhi may be part of a Kremlin-led encouragement for wealthy Russian businessmen to improve less well-off areas of the sparse country, something that fellow oligarch Roman Abramovich is familiar with. Despite his purchase of the club rumoured to be less of a business purchase and more of a donation by Dagestan president Magomedsalam Magomedov in return to the promise of investment in the Dagestan area, plans for a new stadium complex are underway. A state-of-the-art arena, anywhere between 40,000 and 50,000 capacity, would help to revitalise the area, adding a splash of glamour and architectural magnificence to a part of Russia with a reputation for violence and assassination. It would certainly be an improvement on their current home, the rundown and archaic Dynamo Stadium.

Anzhi Makhachkala's current home, Dynamo Stadium

In either a new home or the current abode, Anzhi’s players, homegrown or international names, may still find their current match-day routine to be somewhat different to any other club they have played at. Due to safety reasons linked to the areas historical, and present-day, status, Anzhi’s players live in the Russian capital Moscow, training there as a team throughout the week, only flying to Makhachkala for their home games. A two hour flight to cover the 1,250 mile route between the capital and the war-torn region is a confusing state of affairs, with Anzhi’s general director German Chistyakov claiming it to be more of a lifestyle choice than due to the safety concerns - a problem that will be eradicated by the introduction of the new Anzhi Arena.

Eto’o’s arrival was only the start of the big names being linked to the Anzhi revolution. In less than six months since Eto’o arrived in Dagestan/Moscow, the likes of Nicolas Anelka, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Robin Van Persie, Dimitar Berbatov, Florent Malouda, Salomon Kalou, Peter Odemwingie, Gareth Bale, Didier Drogba  and Andrey Arshavin, among many, many others, have been linked with a move to Kerimov’s part football team, part community project.

As well as the excellent Hungarian international Balazs Dzsudzsak and former Chelsea wing-back Yuri Zhirkov, the current Anzhi squad, who were previously managed by veteran Gadzhi Gadzhiyev, also have Roberto Carlos in their squad. The aging Brazilian full-back, now 37, became the club’s caretaker player-coach in September, but the appointment was only intended to be temporary. As you would expect with a club of Anzhi’s new-found wealth, managerial heavyweights Guus Hiddink, Jose Mourinho and England manager Fabio Capello were all poised to take over.

Plans for the modern Anzhi Arena complex

Capello et al won’t be heading to Anzhi, however, as Yuri Krasnozhan was appointed as manager this week. The former Lokomotiv Moscow manager will have more familiarity with the Russian Premier League than any of those linked to the job, and his first task will be to unite a squad that is constantly being linked to a host of stellar names yet is currently trailing the league leaders, Zenit St Petersburg, by 13 points.

To many football fans in the UK, Russian football used to be all about Andrey Arshavin, plastic pitches and Champion’s League matches kicking off mid-afternoon. Anzhi’s arrival on the continental scene may not be complete for a number of seasons, but Kerimov’s ambitions to create a football dynasty in the most unexpected of environments has certainly got people talking.