The Santos case: what will the change of sports citizenship of the Zenit defender lead to

Zenit defender Douglas Santos has changed his sports citizenship from Russian to Brazilian. The Brazilian flag is now displayed on the FIFA website next to the name of the football player. Previously, the player was included in the Brazilian national team for the September matches of the 2026 World Cup qualifying tournament. The Santos agency said that the footballer would accept the invitation of the national team. On the RPL website, the defender already has the status of a legionnaire in the Zenit application. We're figuring out what this means for Sergey Semak's team.

As a legionnaire

In September 2024, Santos received a Russian passport and has not been considered a legionnaire since. However, everything changed at the end of August, when Carlo Ancelotti suddenly called up the defender to the Brazilian national team. The ex-coach of Real Madrid was generally surprised: the blue-white-blues were preparing to send Gerson to the national team, but in the end Luis Enrique and Santos received the invitation. At the same time, the latter had never played for the main team of his homeland before.

Ancelotti's decision became a problem for the club — being called up to the Brazilian national team meant that Douglas would lose his status as a local player in the RPL. However, Zenit did not get upset.

"The club will only support its player in any decision, it is his personal right to choose: our captain has never hidden that going out on the football field in a T—shirt of his native country is the main sporting dream in life," Zenit said.

Santos didn't even need to make his debut for the national team — on August 31, he changed his sports citizenship and became a legionnaire again. Information about this is available on the FIFA and RPL websites.

Santos is listed on Zenit's website as a Russian-Brazilian football player — the defender still has his Russian passport.

— What are we planning to do after Douglas' citizenship change? To monitor his progress in the Brazilian national team, he will enter the field as a legionnaire," Alexander Medvedev, adviser to the chairman of the club's board, told Izvestia.

"The football god has rewarded Douglas Santos," Gennady Orlov, a well—known football commentator, told Sport—Express. — I mean the call-up to the Brazilian national team. After all, the defender is already 31 years old, and in recent rounds he has not been particularly convincing. He let the team down and received two yellow cards in a crucial meeting with Spartak. But this invitation to the national team, which came from Carlo Ancelotti, inspired him! In the game with Paris NN, he already resembled himself at his best. I found myself in someone else's support zone, and I scored a great shot after Sobolev's pass. And it's primarily about his motivation. The call to the national team inspired me. It's all about the details. Psychology.

Problems with the limit

A new or old legionnaire in the team is an additional headache for Sergey Semak, who is already experiencing difficulties at the start of the season. It's because of the limit - we remind you that according to the current rules, teams are allowed to have 13 foreign players, and here everything is on the edge for St. Petersburg, because together with Douglas there are exactly 13 of them. In addition, there cannot be more than eight foreign players on the field at the same time, and there are bigger problems here.

The fact is that Zenit is one of the most foreign—dependent teams in Russia. Semak has been regularly releasing only three foreign players on the field in recent months. At the same time, Douglas was often the third of them.

Now the coaching staff is faced with a dilemma: to abandon either Santos or another foreign player. It is quite possible that rookie Roman Vega will now take the field more often, because Douglas no longer has a competitive advantage over him.

Zenit has some experience - for the match of the 7th round against Paris NN (2-0), St. Petersburg just released Alexander Sobolev, Maxim Glushenkov and Denis Adamov. Santos was also included in the squad, so Zenit, with this configuration, would have met the "8+3" limit.

— Fans can say that we were used, — Svetlana Zhurova, a State Duma deputy and Olympic champion, expressed her opinion about the current situation to Izvestia. — This whole story is just commerce. Why do we need people who don't want to play for our country? A person doesn't want to play for the national team, and being Russian is not necessary. He's not our citizen from the beginning. So it wasn't close to him. We can say that it is necessary to issue passports more carefully, but not to check the intentions of the players on a polygraph. We cannot condemn a native Brazilian for returning to their location. Many Russians do the same. I support the granting of citizenship only for those who are willing to assimilate with us, to learn the language — even if they leave later, it is clear that the person was trying to become Russian. A person's homeland is where his family is, not his passport.

Another question is what will be even more difficult next. Starting next season in Russia, the limit will change, as announced by Russian Sports Minister Mikhail Degtyarev in August.

— The optimal target is "5 — on the field, 10 — in the application." We will only discuss the horizon and the smoothness of the introduction. The clubs have players on multi-year contracts, we will take this into account. But we will sign the order this year to make it easier for the clubs to plan. We won't touch this season. We will start the decline smoothly from the next one," Degtyarev said.

With this limit configuration, Zenit will become one of the most affected clubs along with Krasnodar, Dynamo and Spartak. The club will have to clean up the application and, most importantly, reduce the number of foreign players on the field. And here the change of Santos' citizenship will already become a serious and completely unnecessary problem.