The End for Arshavin?

After six disappointing months with Kuban Krasnodar in southern Russia, Andrey Arshavin was today released from his contract. The termination was announced on the official website of the Yellow-Greens and was described as a mutual agreement between the two parties, which Arshavin later confirmed to Sport-Express.

The Zenit legend managed 356 minutes for Kuban spread over eight matches, in which he received two yellow cards and no goals or assists.

Andrey Arshavin meeting with Veniamin Kondratyev, the governor of the Krasnodar Krai.

Arshavin joined Kuban on a free transfer together with Roman Pavlyuchenko before this season, and he was hoped to fill the gap left by the departure of Bulgarian international Ivelin Popov who left for Spartak. Before agreeing to join Kuban, Arshavin had a meeting with Veniamin Kondratyev, the governor of the Krasnodar Krai, and the former Arsenal man was expected to be the face of the ‘new Kuban’ that was planned to be the people’s team as it was said in the summer.

While Arshavin failed to live up to his part of the agreement on the pitch, so did Kuban off the pitch. The club are in dire financial problems and many of the players have gone months without being paid. This lead to midfielder Sergey Tkachev complaining to the Conflict Resolution Chamber of the Russian Football Union in

December who later terminated his contract, which allowed him to move to CSKA on a free transfer.
The club is currently in a limbo, as the Krasnodar Krai is no longer funding the club, while the former owner and current chairman of the board Oleg Mkrtchyan is still trying to figure out exactly how to rebuild the club to its former glory. Therefore, it is also easy to imagine that the termination of Arshavin’s contract is related to the club trying to cut its wage budget, which Aleksandr Zotov, the head of the Russian Players Union also told Sport-Express.

It is currently unknown what the future holds for Arshavin, who is widely seen as the best Russian player in this decade. Speaking to Sportfakt, Arshavin revealed that he would look at all offers coming his way, but also that he would retire if he didn’t get any.

Arshavin turns 35 in May, and with the exception of the 21 games he played in the 2013/2014 season after returning to Zenit, we have to go all the way back to the 2010/2011 season to find the last season where he played more than 1000 minutes of competitive league football. That was by the way the season which saw
Arshavin feature in the League Cup final against Birmingham, a match Arsenal, to the upset of many Irish online gamblers, lost 2-1 at the Emirates stadium. On top of this, Arshavin failed to make much of an impact when playing for Zenit and it could look like we have seen the last of the little wizard, although the possibility remains of either a Russian club looking for domestic talent or of a club from one of the ‘new’ big-money leagues taking a chance on him.