Valery Gladilin, once a mentor at Moscow Spartak, challenged the fairness of a levy targeting foreign football players. He shared his take with vprognoze.ru, offering a practical perspective on how such a tax might ripple through Russia’s top leagues and what it could mean for clubs across the country.
He asked a straightforward question about the financial footprint of this proposed tax on clubs like Zenit, Spartak, and CSKA. In his assessment, the impact would be small. He noted that many Premier League clubs do not lean heavily on foreign players, and in the First League, the trend often involves filling rosters with outsiders on free transfers. This suggests that a large portion of Russian Premier League clubs might sign foreign players mainly to complete squads, rather than out of a deep reliance on foreign talent. From his viewpoint, the tax would burden the league itself more than the biggest, cash-flush clubs, whose transfer strategies tend to be diversified. He argued that the current figures would be modest for the major Russian clubs, making the tax less disruptive to their budgets while possibly restricting smaller teams more significantly.
In February, Maxim Mitrofanov, the General Secretary of the Russian Football Union, indicated there was a chance the tax could be piloted in the 2024/25 season. The goal was to observe effects in a controlled setting before any wider rollout. The RFU official contended that such a measure might push clubs to give more playing time to local Russian talents, thereby strengthening the domestic pool and increasing exposure for homegrown players on match day.
Earlier discussions from early 2022 referenced a plan tied to playing time, with estimates suggesting amounts like five thousand or ten thousand rubles for each minute a foreign player spent on the pitch. The exact levy would vary by age, with the lower bracket applying to younger foreign players and a higher rate for older ones. This model aimed to balance foreign presence with opportunities for Russian players, supporting homegrown development while keeping league competitiveness intact.
Public comments around the topic often cited a Spartak alumnus as a point of reference when comparing with high-profile players in other leagues, such as Serie A. The comparisons highlighted broader debates about how foreign talent interacts with local development programs and how tax measures might influence recruitment strategies. Throughout these discussions, observers have stressed that any fiscal measure should be weighed against the broader goals of player development, national team performance, and the financial sustainability of clubs within Russia’s varied league structure. Reading these debates reveals how policy design would influence club budgets, youth progression, and the overall health of the domestic game across different market environments in Canada, the United States, and neighboring regions.