The head of Gazprom, Alexey Miller, flew to Qatar last weekend to gather his…

The head of Gazprom, Alexey Miller, flew to Qatar last weekend for the training camp of his Zenit. The visit, naturally, was made for purely work purposes, as evidenced by his business suit. To do this, the head of Gazprom (who does not even have a formal relationship with the club, does not hold any position there, acting only as an investor) used an Airbus company plane. How can you not visit your club in sunny Qatar, the annual maintenance of which costs Gazprom almost a quarter of a billion dollars? After all, this is exactly the Zenit budget announced by the media in 2022.

This is despite the fact that our team was not allowed into the World Cup in Qatar, leaving only friendly matches with teams from Central Asia for entertainment. And all Russian football was simply erased from everywhere, including European cups. But state football investor Alexey Miller continues to spend huge amounts of money from Gazprom’s budget on training camps and the existence of a club with foreign players. For what?

Doesn’t Miller have other worries and problems? Is everything really all right with Gazprom, one of the main donors to the Russian economy? Alexey Miller flies to Qatar to watch the Zenit-Zenith match at a time when gas exports to Europe have fallen to historic lows. The price of blue fuel is far from happy forecasts. To top it all off, a warm winter on the continent dashed any expectations for future windfalls. In general, what Gazprom will do with exports and how to replenish the Russian budget is unknown.

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But it is clear that Zenit and Alexey Miller will be fine. After all, the key to a good performance is excellent training camp. It is clear that Alexey Miller, like his club, prepared in very warm and sunny places. Probably in the same place where I spent the New Year.