Russia's coach walks away

Russia's preparations for next month's vital European Championship qualifier at Lansdowne Road have been thrown into turmoil by the resignation of team manager Valeri Gazzayev in the wake of his team's 2-1 home defeat by Israel on Wednesday night.

Gazzayev was only appointed to manage the team in the wake of last year's World Cup, at which Oleg Romantsev had overseen a series of disappointing performances. The 49-year-old overhauled the squad and brought in a considerable number of younger players, initially to positive effect.

Under him the Russians made a strong start to their Euro 2004 campaign with wins over Ireland and Albania, in each of which the team managed four goals. But more recently the team's campaign has suffered a series of setbacks with just one point taken from their last three competitive outings.

Russia lie third in the Group 10 table, five points behind the Swiss and three behind Ireland, although they have a game in hand on both of their qualification rivals.

If they could manage a point in Dublin they would be in a strong position to secure at least a place in the play-offs, as their remaining games, against the Swiss in September and Georgia the following month, are at home, where they perform strongly.

The team's recent form, however, made the prospect of taking seven points from those three games looks decidedly remote, and Gazzayev was under considerable pressure to produce an improvement this week.

Instead, Wednesday's defeat of a strong Russian side by the Israelis marked a further deterioration in the side's fortunes, and immediately afterwards the coach opted to walk away, branding the players' performance in the game as "disgusting", and accusing them of lacking "any will to win".

"There's no need to talk about the match," he said, "it was a shameful, disgusting performance by our team tonight. The players were totally lacking any will to win, so I told them in the locker-room, 'If you play like that I'm no longer your coach'."

Russian Football Union (RFU) president Viacheslav Koloskov promptly accepted Gazzayev's decision and indicated that the coach's assistant, Alexander Borodyuk, would take charge, at least for the moment.

The 40 year-old played in two World Cups, in Italy in 1990 and in the United States four years later, and won a gold medal with the Soviet Union at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

"Only Borodyuk comes to mind at the moment," said Koloskov. "He has worked with this team, but I still need to think about it and discuss it with a few people. I do not know if it would have been better or worse, but I regret that I allowed Gazzayev to coach Russia and his club (CSKA Moscow) last year."

Russian officials rubbed salt into the wounds of Gazzayev by fining him for critical remarks he made about referees last week. Gazzayev was fined 30,000 roubles (€1,000) for an outburst after last week's 2-1 defeat to city rivals Torpedo-Metallurg.

"I have only one explanation for our loss - very biased and incompetent officiating," Gazzayev said at the time.

There were reports from Moscow yesterday that the RFU would appoint a longer-term successor to Gazzayev early next week.