Spartak found itself in an extremely difficult situation with Quincy Promes. Even if he avoids extradition to the Netherlands from the UAE and returns to Russia, the current leaders of the club will have to think very carefully whether it is worth continuing cooperation with such a toxic character. Still, when a person has already been sentenced to a year and a half in prison for stabbing and six years for participating in the smuggling of more than a ton of cocaine, this is a diagnosis.
We'll see how things go with his appeal, but at least I don't remember Quincy publicly disavowing these accusations. In this sense, returning him to Spartak at the beginning of 2021 was already a risky undertaking by the club’s previous leaders. After all, even then these cases were opened against him.
And now the current management has to sort it all out. And at the same time, Promes set the club up by escaping from the scene of a car accident in the Emirates, because of which he was detained in Dubai and was not allowed to fly to Moscow. Then, in the UAE, he hung out in nightclubs, and his girlfriend posted videos of this on social networks. It’s completely ugly in relation to Spartak, which still hasn’t fired him after all these arts and is trying to help in an extremely lousy situation.
We have already realized that Promes is a very active person with an extravagant lifestyle. And we still don’t know what might come out in Quincy’s biography – the guy is very prolific in generating news stories. So any funny stories can be associated with him.
The question arises: how should our clubs deal with such characters? Not only with Promes, but also with another Dutchman, Rai Vlut (the Ural striker was arrested in the Netherlands in November 2021 after an accident that resulted in the death of a four-year-old boy, in April 2023 he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison, an appeal is currently being considered . – Izvestia), and the Chilean Jordi Thompson, who in his native country drunkenly tried to strangle his ex-girlfriend due to a domestic quarrel, barely got bail by a court decision, and now plays in Orenburg.
Many people here are calling for us not to take on such players, and, if they have come under criminal charges when they were already players on Russian teams, to terminate their contracts. As with the same Vlut, in the face of a protest from fans, the Dutch “Heracles” terminated the contract when it turned out that he got into that accident while driving drunk.
We have a different approach, and it does not mean that we approve of such offenses and try to protect the violators. It is no coincidence that Ural President Grigory Ivanov said that the club would terminate the contract with Vlut if he loses his appeals in all court instances in Holland.
In this sense, we are definitely not repeating the behavior of Western countries, where the influence of public opinion, the media and various ideological attitudes has reached such insanity that a person can be fired from his position and his life trampled on even before trial. We have seen this in the examples of a wide variety of harassment, the Me Too movements and other “cancel culture”.
Therefore, I think it is quite reasonable to wait until all court decisions in these cases are final, and only then part with the players. In any case, I don’t think it’s right to impose decisions on clubs. That is, do not accept any directives at the level of the RFU and RPL that we do not take certain football players on the basis of criminal cases brought against them.
And then everything should depend on the outlook on life and common sense of a particular employer. For example, we know the position of Ural on Vlut. And Spartak has a whole decision-making corridor. They can rip Promes off like a stick and take his money for causing image damage to the club. For not showing up on time from training camp. Or they can continue to support him further.
This is the choice of the team management exclusively. If we give a moral assessment to such decisions, then I would also share the elements of the crime. If you hit someone with a car or crashed into a tree, that’s one thing. This can happen to each of us when you are distracted while driving for just a second and hit a person. This is one situation. With Vlut it’s different, because he got behind the wheel while drunk. Or take the article “rape”, in which you won’t understand anything at all – either it really happened, or she herself jumped on the guy in order to later extract money from him in court.
I would treat such offenses very carefully. Perhaps, according to the principle: “it didn’t happen on Russian territory – and that’s okay.” With Promes, the fact that he stabbed his cousin with a knife is already a serious wake-up call. And drugs are completely too much. Moreover, the volume measured in tons. In my opinion, such characters should definitely not exist, not like in our football – in our country.
I understand that Spartak does not want to lose a quality player. Moreover, if Promes had not had such problems with the law, it is far from a fact that he would have returned to Russia three years ago. Not so long ago, the words of Orenburg sports director Dmitry Andreev resonated that with their modest budget, they would hardly have been able to persuade Thompson to accept the offer on financial terms if he had not been under investigation in his country in Chile, which is why not all Europeans want deal with him. In this sense, our club wisely took advantage of the situation by taking a young, talented 19-year-old football player.
And many believe that in a situation where all sorts of horror stories are being told about our country abroad, few quality foreign players will come to us without being in the same position as Promes, Vlut and Thompson. But I believe that, in principle, RPL clubs now do not have the same budgets as ten years ago to attract really strong foreigners.
Therefore, I don’t see any point in coming up with any tricks to bring them here, if this is not Hulk, Witzel, Garay from their heyday, when they moved to Zenit. My opinion: now, with rare exceptions, legionnaires who are much better than our young Russians will not go to Russia. And it’s not worth spending money on them and risking your reputation, unless, of course, club managers are interested in results and development, and not in illegal earnings through various agency schemes.
Many managers themselves praise foreigners and belittle our guys only in order to justify to the club owners the expediency of throwing away money. And this can only be combated by public condemnation. As with such scandals as with Promes. If Spartak is now labeled as a club that supports a drug dealer, then next time they will think twice before holding on to a contract with him. Especially when he is also setting up the club, as Quincy does.
The author was the owner of the Spartak football club (Moscow) in 2000-2004, and the president of FC Khimki in 2004-2005.
The editorial position may not coincide with the opinion of the author
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