Os milhões do futebol russo

Numa época em que o FC Porto se cruzou com vários clubes russos - vendeu o seu capitão (Bruno Alves) ao Zenit St. Petersburgo e defrontou na Liga Europa o CSKA e o Spartak de Moscovo -, chamou-me à atenção o artigo Budgets of Russian football clubs in 2011:

«The newly started season in the Russian championship traditionally brings a new record of aggregate budgets of its 16 participant clubs. According to the ranking drawn up in collaboration between the experts of Sports.ru and Finans Magazine, the expenditures for the Russian football in 2011 will get ever so close to the billion dollar level and make up for $947 million (with the exception of stadium construction costs).
It’s a lot of money. A whole lot of money. It’s 8 or 10 times more than the Russian clubs have been spending in the 2000-s (...). It’s a lot more than the 18 Spanish Primera clubs spend today (if we factor out Real Madrid and Barcelona with their global ambitions and revenues) or the 17 Serie A clubs (if we exclude Inter, Milan, and Juventus). It’s more than all the Dutch and Portuguese top division clubs combined spend per season. For some, it might have come as a surprise that with the salaries paid in Saturn you could have hired a great part of the Italian national team (and there will still be some money left for several non-Italian Serie A stars).»


O artigo completo (com os números e os donos dos diversos clubes russos) pode ser lido aqui.