"Everyone has a crisis in the economy, and it has not bypassed us"

Last week, the Russian football season ended with the Russian Cup Superfinal and the play-off matches for a place in the Premier League. One of the main participants in the transition games was Tolyatti Akron, which managed to keep its registration in the RPL after the 13th place in the championship and the dismissal of head coach Zaur Tedeev. The team, led by acting head coach Murat Iskakov, passed the Volgograd Rotor thanks to a 2-0 away win, despite a 0-1 home defeat in the return leg.

Immediately after the end of the season, Artem Dzyuba, the main scorer and the most media figure of the team, announced his departure from Akron. In an interview with Izvestia, club owner Pavel Morozov summed up the results of the season, talked about the search for a new head coach and a possible replacement for Dzyuba, and also assessed the prospects for further financing of the team and the construction of a stadium in Tolyatti, due to the lack of which Akron is currently hosting rivals in Samara.

— What is your assessment of the club over the past season?

— You know, I'd probably give it a three-minus on a five-point scale.

— Why was the season so nervous for Akron?

— A number of factors have affected. Psychologically, it's about the second season, which everyone says is more difficult to play than the first. Of course, there was a lack of quality reinforcement — there really were transfer failures, that is, we did not strengthen systematically. And, of course, when you lose several matches in a row, you fall into a psychological pit and are at the bottom. And getting out of the bottom is already quite difficult.

— How did you say goodbye to Dzyuba after the return match against Rotor?

— We wanted to arrange a moment of farewell for him, but, unfortunately, everything did not go according to plan. We didn't have time to say goodbye to him at the stadium, as planned. Our players quickly left the field, we didn't have time to turn on the videos on the stadium screen. We had prepared several farewell videos that we wanted to show.

— In the future, will Akron need a football player close to Dzyuba in terms of sports level, status and media coverage? Or has the club already outgrown this need?

— It is clear that in any case, there must be some experienced player in the locker room. A motivator who can give a speech, energize, and cheer up football players, especially young ones. We need a player like that, but I don't think it should be an age-old player who will come to Akron for a short time.

— How will you look for him? Will you acquire someone much younger than Dzyuba, or will you try to grow Akron from the current youth?

— We will have a new head coach now. We will reassemble the team and partially strengthen it. The club's task is not to average the squad, but to strengthen it. We couldn't do it last season, so we'll try next season. Unfortunately, the students of our academy, on whom we rely heavily, have not yet grown up. But I think that in a year or two the strengthening will also be due to them.

— How many people are currently on the shortlist of candidates for the post of head coach of Akron?

— I know three people, but there may be more on the shortlist. The bigger ones are the ones we have time to discuss with the club's CEO on the go. There are probably six or seven surnames there.

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— Are there any foreigners on this list?

- of course.

— From neighboring countries or from Europe too?

— There are different ones. There is also a European, and people not from neighboring countries, but from fraternal countries.

— The names of Dmitry Igdisamov and Igor Osinkin appeared in the media. Does this have a basis?

— Igdisamov could be a good option, but there's no point in discussing it, because I think CSKA will extend it. Igor Vitalievich is not on our shortlist.

— Is there a Vladimir Fedotov?

- no.

— Playing in the RPL guarantees even the last-place club a deduction to its budget of more than 300 million rubles from the current TV contract between the league and Match TV. If Akron were relegated to the First League now, how prepared would they be without this bonus to finance the team enough to return to the Premier League quickly?

— We were very upset that it was so difficult to stay in the RPL. There was even a deja vu now with the transitional matches two years ago with Ural, when we entered the Premier League. We also won the away match 2-0, and then lost in Zhiguli city 1.:2. There was a very nervous ending. Now, in the games with Rotor, history repeated itself, with the only difference being that we were now playing as an RPL club. We were very worried about this — of course, no one wants to fly out. That would be very sad. But, of course, in the event of a departure, they would have relied on a quick return to the RPL and would have set such a task.

— Does the current situation in the global and Russian economies allow your holding company to feel confident enough to finance the football club in the same volume?

— The previous ones are not the same, but the financing will continue. We are a private company, a manufacturing holding company. And manufacturing holdings and manufacturing enterprises are now very lame. Everyone has an economic crisis. He didn't pass us by. It's difficult for us too. But we are optimistic about the future both as a holding company and as a football club. Therefore, there are no plans to rigidly sequester the budget, but we probably won't increase it globally either.

— Is there an understanding of the possibilities to build a stadium in Tolyatti that corresponds to the RPL?

- of course. What football club owner doesn't dream of owning his own stadium? And which city doesn't dream of it? We want to build it, but here we need to return to your previous question about the crisis in the economy, about the state of the production holding. Everything is not easy, so now they have made a big bet on building their own academy. We are currently actively building — by the end of this year we will erect a new building with an area of 2.5 thousand square meters. m. We are currently restoring the base. We plan to have six football fields there, three of them this year. We are also repairing the administrative and household building. So we focused on the academy and the base. There are plans for a stadium, too, but I would not like to give specific dates yet. Hopefully in the medium term.

— Has the place for the stadium in Tolyatti already been looked for?

— The former Torpedo Stadium with a capacity of 18,000 spectators. It's very old and in disrepair. When we get our hands on it and have the money, we will demolish it completely and build a new stadium.