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Russian labor body grants RFU another month to repay Capello’s wage debt

The RFU is currently experiencing financial difficulties and its budget deficit totals 500 million rubles ($8.4 million)

MOSCOW, December 19. /TASS/. Russia’s labor watchdog announced on Thursday it allowed the Russian Football Union (RFU) to postpone by one month wage arrears payment to Fabio Capello.

Capello and Oreste Cinquini, the Russian football team’s general manager, have been unpaid for six months. According to results of an inspection carried out last month by the Federal Agency for Labor and Employment (Rostrud) the debt stood at 181.5 million rubles, which ought to be repaid within a month, i.e. by December 19.

Rostrud said in its statement on Friday that it decided to grant an appeal from the country’s governing football body and extended the date for RFU’s required wage arrears payment for another month, i.e. until January 19, 2015.

The RFU is currently experiencing financial difficulties and its budget deficit totals 500 million rubles ($8.4 million). Following the session of the RFU’s Executive Committee earlier this week, Nikolay Tolstykh, the president of the union, said that a special anti-crisis commission was intended to be set up to tackle the financial difficulties of the organization.

The Russian national squad experienced a string of setbacks over the past decade failing to qualify for the 2006 World Cup in Germany and 2010 championship in South Africa to the great dismay of Russian football fans.

Things changed, however, when Italian phenomenon Capello took over the team as the head coach and managed to help the Russian national squad to qualify for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

The team, however, failed to clear the first stage of the much-anticipated global tournament, putting their coach in the center of stern criticism and raising serious concerns in the country about the team’s performance in the next World Cup, which would be hosted by Russia in 2018.

However, Russia did not severe the contract with Capello after the Russian team’s performance at the World Cup in Brazil and the Italian manager also decided to stay with the Russian squad as the head coach until the year of 2018, as stipulated by the contract terms.

The country won the bid to host the 2018 World Cup almost four years ago in a tight race against the joint bid from England, Portugal and Spain and the joint bid on behalf of Belgium and the Netherlands.

Russia selected 11 host cities to be the venues for the matches of the 2018 World Cup and they are Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, Kazan, Saransk, Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Samara.

The matches of the 2018 World Cup will be held at 12 stadiums located in the 11 mentioned above cities across Russia. Two of the stadiums are located in the Russian capital.