MOSCOW. (Alexander Gorbunov, RIA Novosti).
In three month's time, Russia looks set to remain the only European country whose national soccer team will be managed by a hired foreigner.
Indeed, England's Swedish manager Sven Goran Eriksson, who has largely failed to make his six-year tenure a true success story, is quitting after the upcoming World Cup in Germany, and Portuguese manager Louis Felipe Scolari hardly passes for a hired gun from overseas. The Brazilian explains his enterprise with the Seleccao das Quinas mostly by a drive to help give a fresh boost to a skidding football machine and, importantly, does not have language and cultural barriers to overcome.
Now let's take a look at Dutchman Guus Hiddink, 58, who has just signed for the management of the Russian team. The record of his public statements - which includes, in addition to what he described as his natural "curiosity", little beyond his wife's delight with Russian culture and an it's-a-great-adventure attitude to his new job - looks rather bleak. Certainly one should expect more practical words from a man paid �4 million for 400 working days in the following two years.
Technically, it is up to the Russian Football Union to assess Hiddink's performance. In fact, it is hard to have real leverage on a man whose fee is going to come from elsewhere. The story of Peter the Great who used to learn shipmaking from the Dutch is, to the astonishment of many European experts, repeating itself through Russia's oil money as both RFU's main projects - the Give Stadiums to Children Program and now the two-year Operation Kingmaker the Dutchman - are funded by oil billionaire Roman Abramovich through his National Football Academy facility.
In the Soviet times, people who did hazardous jobs were entitled to a glass of free milk a day - a pleasant if small perk, especially for the want of others. Considering how hazardous Hiddink's job (maybe the last one with a national team) in a third-world football country with no more than three dozen players to look at, to say nothing of play with, is likely to be, it is difficult to begrudge him his high - even by European standards - profit.
The list of problems the Dutchman is going to encounter in Russia includes, apart from the inevitable language barrier (Hiddink does not speak Russian, and the dictionary he was presented while signing the contract is unlikely to be in much use), two things he may not have given a good thought to while flying onboard an Abramovich-provided business jet.
For one thing, his dealings with club managers are going to be tough because of Russia's long-standing confrontation between the clubs and the national team. Hiddink's exceptional pay completely overshadowing the Russian sports media debate is not going to help, either.
For the other, Australia and Korea, the Dutchman's trademark success stories Russian soccer bosses are so keen to repeat, are in the very least controversial. Australia's qualification for the World Cup against Uruguay is questioned by many as accidental, and "ref's most favored nation" status clearly granted to World Cup 2002 host Korea is not exactly what one might call a manager's miracle.
To put it simply, the Dutch kingmaker is highly unlikely to make Russian players kings of football and himself risks to end up as a king for an hour.
