MKT ARAZ HAS GONE UNDER

It has to be admitted that Azerbaijan's football fans are already used to nasty surprises from their game.  The collapse of Imisli's MKT Araz right on the eve of the start of the 16th championship of Azerbaijan can be called one such surprise. This football club is the runner up in last year's Azerbaijan Cup and it played in the UEFA Cup.

Between the lines of the surprise 

News about the club's collapse came right out of the blue, bearing in mind that the Imisli club was one of the most stable in the national premier league. The club had at its disposal a state-of-the-art base with an 8,000-seat stadium and training fields. The official reason given for the club's collapse is that the management did not have the finances. This management decision came as a shock not just to the country's football fans but to the footballers themselves and to the squad's trainers. Igor Nakonechnyy, MKT Araz's chief trainer, did not hide his amazement. "I am shocked. I am simply lost for words. Over the years, we have built a fighting squad which took on as equals the favourites of Azerbaijani football. Last season we were at the top for a long while, got through to the final in the country's cup and also played in the UEFA Cup for the first time in our history. We have got an even better team this season and we could have been more successful than in last year's championship. And now the club has gone under literally right before our eyes."

In the first preliminary round of the UEFA Cup, MKT Araz gave way to Poland's Groclin after losing to it on the aggregate score of two matches - the match ended in a goalless draw at the Tofiq Bahramov Republic Stadium and the Imisli team lost  0:1 by a cat's whisker in their away game.

The footballers themselves, who include members of the national squad, had to look for another job pretty sharply. Fortunately, transfer opportunities end only on 31 August. So the players should even be "grateful" to the Imisli club management for not winding up the club this September. If it had, the players would have all been at a lose end and would not have had any football practice at least for six months.

This is not the first time that the national premiership has got off to such a start. The Ganca club from the town of the same name closed down before the start of the 15th Championship of Azerbaijan last year. This club used to be called Kapaz and twice won gold medals in the national premier league. Before that, the club Samkir collapsed. It had also been a national champion. Thus, another region disappeared from the football map of Azerbaijan and the championship has lost a certain interest  which the ambitious MKT Araz squad could have added to it. Incidentally, only 13 clubs played last season due to the collapse of the Ganca squad. There might have been 13 again in this year's championship too (in this event, one team would be without a match in every round) if the Association of the Football Federations of Azerbaijan hadn't decided to let second league ABN Barda through to the premier division.  But it can be said with certainty that the Barda club will not be a fitting replacement for the Imisli club with its experienced squad and ace players.

Money again

Why did the Imisli squad collapse so unexpectedly and quickly? The answer is as plain as the nose on your face. The trouble with Azerbaijani football is that clubs mostly have just one financial sponsor.  This sponsor finances at his whim. For them, the football club is like a favourite toy for a child: play with it for as long as you want and then discard it when you've had enough. This was how the president of MKT Araz behaved. 

There is quite a different practice in Europe. European clubs have a host of investors - from the presidents of major financial companies and other money-bags to ordinary shops. So even if one of the sponsors refuses to finance a club, the club might not go through the best of times but at least it won't be wound up. Football clubs are thereby safeguarded against sudden collapse such as the Imisli club experienced. We aren't Europe, many will say. But why not adopt positive aspects of European football development for the good of Azerbaijani football? 

The inflated salaries paid to players and no marketing are other significant problems facing our national game. In many of Azerbaijan's football clubs the players get more than their colleagues in such European countries as Portugal or the Czech Republic. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of Azerbaijani footballers do not deserve such high salaries. For instance, recently the capital's Inter team signed up Czech footballer Branislav Cervenka, the first player from this footballing country in Azerbaijan. He said that footballers in the Czech Republic earn much less than their counterparts in Azerbaijan. That's amazing, isn't it? Especially when you consider the success enjoyed by the Czech national squad and by Czech teams in international and European games. While Azerbaijani clubs are not able to beat in European cup matches clubs which are even rather mediocre by European standards.  The Azerbaijani national squad traditionally comes last in qualifying rounds of European and World cups, surprising us from time to time by suddenly beating teams such as Serbia, Montenegro or Finland.

The managers of Azerbaijani clubs should therefore review their pricing policy with regard to their players otherwise all our remaining Azerbaijani squads may suffer the same fate as Imisli's MKT Araz. Marketing is of no small importance in football. In our football, sponsors putting money into the development of a club practically don't get any returns from this. While the opposite is true again in Europe.

Until the bosses of Azerbaijani football learn to value their footballers according to their merits and to derive benefit from the clubs which they manage, Azerbaijani football will continue to vegetate on the fringes of European and world football.