Russian Football Union Increases Budget By $11M To $63M For 2015

The budget of the Russian Football Union (RFS) is to increase by 600M rubles ($10.8M) this year, but it may not be enough to make ends meet. RFS said that last year's budget was 2.9B rubles and will go up to 3.5B rubles ($63.2M) this year. An RFS spokesperson told SBD Global that the announced figure is going to be "sufficient" to cover the organization's costs, but would not elaborate. Meanwhile, RFS President Nikolai Tolstykh said in February that the organization's outstanding debts had reached 900M rubles ($16.3M). Of that amount, RFS owes 400M rubles ($7.2M) to tycoon Alisher Usmanov, who provided an interest-free loan earlier this year to cover wage arrears of Russia's coach Fabio Capello. In addition, RFS has not had a general sponsor since the contract with natural gas producer Gazprom expired in late '12.
Vladimir Kozlov is a writer in Moscow.