Who owns anzhi makhachkala

Having taken over in , it took Abramovich and his spending until for Chelsea to finally lift the Champions League title—four times the span of the Kerimov era at Anzhi, who haven't even managed to qualify for that competition yet. A domestic cup might have stayed Kerimov's attentions and ambitions a little longer—but even that prize was bitterly lost after CSKA Moscow beat Anzhi on penalties in the Russian Cup final in June. It's all well and good splashing out humongous fees on star names, but for the footballing prizes to follow, the talent has to match the price tag.

Too many of the deals, while offering big wages and the chance to compete for trophies, were shelling out top-rate sums of money on transfers while only bringing in second-tier players in return. The players brought in for huge money were not worth the expenditure, and it has showed in numerous cases when the time came to sell those initial purchases back on.

More will likely come to light in the coming transfer windows if Anzhi are forced to sell the high earners to make up for the lost income from Kerimov. While Hiddink made a good impact in his time as manager, his "hand-picked replacement", according to the BBC , has lasted just 16 days. Meulensteen becomes the fifth manager to depart under the Kerimov era, after Gadzhi Gadzhiev was dismissed eight months after the owner's arrival, Andrey Gordeev lasted just two months, and Yury Krasnozhan only three.

Nosebleed territory for a club who were rooted in the second tier just a couple of seasons prior. Roberto Carlos would retire not long after his arrival, but remained with the club as sporting director, which was vital as owner Kerimov invested more money into Anzhi's first ever youth academy set up, based in Dagestan. In the summer transfer window, Anzhi's first team squad was entirely dismantled as Kerimov sanctioned the sales of most high-profile players, doing anything to recoup any profits.

Denisov had only joined the club in June, while Kokorin had signed for Anzhi literally weeks before his sudden departure. Samuel Eto'o and Willian were both sold to Premier League side Chelsea in that same transfer window, and the mass slaughter of the squad continued into the January window. Suddenly, a squad that had potential to defy all odds and break down footballing barriers had fallen flat on its face. Any hope that Anzhi fans, and residents of Makhachkala, had for the club were well and truly buried.

Anzhi would return to the top flight at the first time of asking, but several years of battling against relegation would eventually catch up on them in , and they were dumped out of the Russian Premier League once more. The slim, slightly balding year-old Russian billionaire owner of Anzhi Makhachkala — a club based around 75 miles down the road from Derbent — is often photographed sporting designer stubble, expensive sunglasses and a vaguely bemused, at second glance totally inscrutable, expression of the sort patented by Roman Abramovich.

The difference between Kerimov and Chelsea's owner is that only two years in to his project to transform the North Caucasus into a new hub of world football, the former became bored with the idea last summer. Unfortunately this change of heart coincided with a blip in his business fortunes and the upshot is that Anzhi are bottom of Russia's Premier League, without a win all season.

They travel to Tottenham Hotspur on Europa League duty as very much a poor man's version of the rising force which, during the past two seasons, promised so much under Guus Hiddink's stewardship. Another veteran occupies the manager's chair these days but Gadzhi Gadzhiyev, a year-old one-time assistant coach of the old USSR team, has a rather less glittering CV than Hiddink.

With a similar downsizing exercise having taken place among a playing staff which once featured the likes of Roberto Carlos, Samuel Eto'o and Lassana Diarra, Anzhi — only founded in — are well back down the road to anonymity.

It was a sorry sight, but one that had plagued Anzhi Makhachkala throughout the football calendar: on the last day of the season — and potentially in their last ever Russian Premier League match — only 2, seats of the 28,capacity stadium were filled. Having been promoted to the first tier in , Anzhi were then taken over by a local billionaire two years later. Suleyman Kerimov was an astute businessman. Within two years, Anzhi had risen to the dizzying heights of a third-place finish in the Russian top-flight — the best in their short history — and boasted an array of international talent, managed by the highly capable Guus Hiddink.

Seemingly overnight, in August , something changed and the entire squad was supposedly made available for transfer. Three weeks later, the squad was dismantled, with groups of players being flogged in package deals.

From a three-year plan to be in the Champions League, to a wholesale quickfire departure of the majority of their first team that left them decimated. I imagine the costs were just seeming too vast, plus the ruble started to tumble which did not help things at all. The FFP fine they got in is testament to the recklessness in spending. The summer transfer window activity of may have pre-empted what was coming, and in the wake of the sales, Anzhi made a conscious decision to refocus their transfer policy to domestic talent and a particular focus on what they could produce from their own academy.

I ask Sansun if it could be deemed a success in light of the fact that Anzhi were relegated just a year after the change in policy, and although they returned at the first time of trying, they have ultimately been relegated once more.