By David Gold at Russia.Park in Kensington Gardens
July 27 – Vitaly Mutko, the Russian Sports Minister, has ruled himself out of contention to become the new President of the Russian Football Union (RFU).
Mutko had been nominated to succeed Sergey Fursenko, who quit his post after Russia’s disappointing 2012 European Championship campaign, where they went out at the group stage.
Mutko told insideworldfootball here that he would be focusing on his Government role, with a series of major sports events coming up during the next decade, including the Winter Olympics and Paralympics in Sochi in 2014 and the World Cup in 2018.
“I am not going to stand for the President,” Mutko said.
“The deadline for agreeing to this nomination was the July 27.
“I will focus on my work as a Government Minister.
“We have a huge number of projects until the year 2018.”
Mutko is also the chairman of Russia 2018, as well as a member of the FIFA Executive Committee, and cited the demands both of those roles place on his time as further reason for his decision not to run for the Presidency of the RFU.
That leaves four nominees in the race to become the new President.
Evgeny Lovchev, a former Soviet Union defender, and Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) executive director Nikolai Tolstykh are both contenders.
Russian Premier League chief Sergei Pryadkin (pictured above) and politician Igor Lebedev are also in the running.
Mutko had previously served as President of the RFU from 2005 to 2009, and has criticised some of the decisions the organisation has made recently.
Most notably the relaxed laws regulating the number of foreign players who could play at any one time for teams in the Premier League, as well as changing the football calendar to move it into line with the rest of Europe.
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