Anzhi Makhachkala: Damning update for Russian club who signed Eto'o and Roberto Carlos | OneFootball

Anzhi Makhachkala will reportedly cease to exist as a professional club this summer.

According to Russian Football News, the former Europa League side have reached the end of the line having failed to receive a license for the Russian third tier.

Football in the Dagestani city will instead continue through Dinamo Makhachkala, who were promoted to Russia’s second tier for the first time in their history this season.

Anzhi’s fall from grace

An official post from Anzhi themselves then confirmed that the club’s application for the license necessary to play in FNL 2 had indeed been denied, thus leading to the loss of its professional status.

All in all, it really is a remarkable situation when you consider that Anzhi seemed hellbent on taking world football by storm in the early 2010s with a number of head-spinning transfers.

Billionaire owner Suleyman Kerimov had overseen a mind-boggling spending spree between 2011 and 2013 in a mission to propel Anzhi to glory that ended just as quickly as it started.

The crazy story of Anzhi’s rise and fall

Anzhi did manage to finish third in the Russian Premier League in 2012/13, even beating Liverpool in Europe along the way, but the fairy tale was swiftly over once the season had concluded.

According to the BBC, Kerimov suddenly slashed the club’s budget of £116 million per season to between £32m and £45m as he was no longer happy to “finance a gravy train.”

The plug was seemingly pulled on all the extravagant spending overnight with an official statement quipping: “having analysed the club’s recent sporting results, the decision has been taken to work on a new long-term strategy for the club”.

And the wheels could hardly have fallen off much quicker with manager Rene Meulensteen losing his job after just 16 days and Anzhi immediately suffering relegation from the top-flight the next season.

All the star players had gone and while they did manage to bounce back with promotion the following year, they were back down for good when they were once again relegated in 2017/18.

To think that the Russian side could go from having Samuel Eto’o and Roberto Carlos on their books to effectively being wiped from the face of the sport in the space in less than a decade truly is astonishing.

In fact, it only makes the original story of how Anzhi shook world football even more eyebrow-raising given how quickly and devastatingly the whole situation has unravelled.

Remembering Anzhi’s spending spree

As such, with Anzhi’s professional journey coming to an end for now, it could hardly have felt more timely to look back at their astonishing spending spree that put them on the footballing world map.

In total, Anzhi made 16 major signings between 2011 and 2013 with everyone from World Cup winners to Champions League heroes pulling on the yellow jersey during Kerimov’s crazy reign.

So, who were they they and how did they do? Well, be sure to check that out below as we take a walk on the wild side by recalling Anzhi’s crazy signings that set them on a decade-long path to oblivion.

1. Roberto Carlos (Free)

Where to start? Carlos went on to make 28 appearances for Anzhi across a hectic spell that saw him playing in defensive midfield, coaching the team on an interim basis and receiving a €1.8 million Bugatti Veyron from Kerimov as a birthday present.

2. Samuel Eto’o (£24.3m)

The most mind-blowing transfer of all saw Eto’o become the world’s highest-paid player with wages of €20 million per year after tax and amass an impressive record of 36 goals from 72 appearances.

According to Goal, Eto’o said at the time of his lucrative transfer: “We are striving to be like Barcelona, they are the inspiration.” He eventually left for Chelsea in the summer of 2013.

3. Willian (£31.5m)

A tiny spell between playing for Shakhtar Donetsk and Chelsea, Willian only ever actually played a handful of games for Anzhi despite having been snapped up as their record signing.

4. Aleksandr Kokorin (£17.1m)

An even crazier misuse of transfer money here with Kokorin never actually playing a single game for Anzhi with the club putting him up for sale in the same summer they signed him due to their budget restructuring.

5. Chris Samba (£12.6m)

Brace yourself for this one because Anzhi signed Samba halfway through the 2011/12 season, only to move him on to Queens Park Rangers in the middle of the following campaign…

6. Chris Samba (£10.44m)

… only to then re-sign him six months later… only to then sell him a couple of months after that. Madness.

7. Moubarak Boussoufa (£7.2m)

One of the more successful coups of Anzhi’s spending spree, Boussoufa – who boasts 70 caps for Morocco – played almost 100 times for the club and notched 13 goals along the way.

8. Lassana Diarra (£4.5m)

Yup, Anzhi got their hands on a midfielder who had played for Chelsea, Arsenal, Real Madrid and France, though they only managed to squeeze 18 matches out of him in the Russian Premier League.

9. Mehdi Carcela-Gonzalez (£5.13m)

Not bad, not bad. Anzhi were able to get 47 games and two goals from their investment with the midfielder, who is capped by both Belgium and Morocco, eventually moving back to Standard Liege.

10. Lacina Traore (£12.6m)

The giant six foot, eight inch striker scored 19 goals across 42 games for Anzhi. He was eventually moved on to AS Monaco having spent time on loan at Everton.

11. Igor Denisov (£13.5m)

Denisov lasted a grand total of three games in an Anzhi jersey before Dynamo Moscow took him in.

12. Balazs Dzsudzsak (£12.6m)

The 108-cap Hungary hero was one of the first signings through the door in Dagestan, but like so many of players on the list, only managed to make a handful of appearances. Injuries capped him at just eight games.

13. Ewerton (£4.86m)

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about this particular Anzhi signing is that he didn’t actually leave the club until 2015, playing 35 times before securing a move to Sporting Lisbon.

14. Yuri Zhirkov (£13.5m)

Snapped up from Chelsea just one year on from winning the double, Zhirkov played over 50 times for Anzhi across two seasons before – like so, so many players on this list – securing a move to Dynamo Moscow.

15. Jucilei (£9m)

Remarkably, Jucilei almost amassed 100 appearances in the yellow jersey as he survived the Anzhi cull to play throughout the disastrous 2013/14 season that ended in relegation.

16. Diego Tardelli (£4.5m)

Tardelli has played 14 times and scored on three occasions for Brazil, but his time in Russia was far less fruitful as he notched a grand total of zero goals from just 14 outings in an Anzhi shirt.

A cautionary tale

For a club that would essentially go on to collapse less than 10 years later, it really does make for a head-scratching ensemble of acquisitions.

The money-saturated carnage of the Kerimov reign at Anzhi certainly serves as a cautionary tale for football clubs wanting to take over the world out of the blue with their post-2013 capitulation making for tough viewing.

And if this really is the end of the line for Anzhi, then perhaps their endurance as something of an oddity in the annals of modern football has, at least, secured them some sort of legacy.