MOSCOW, (RIA Novosti football expert Marc...

In the autumn of 2006, a few months after Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger"s famous (in Russia at least) prediction that a Russian club would win the Champions League in the next decade, I spoke to CSKA Moscow owner Yevgeny Giner at the club"s offices.

Oil prices were at an all-time high, and the confidence oozed by Russian politicians and businesses had trickled down to its major clubs, with CSKA"s 2005 UEFA Cup victory making it the first Russian team to lift a major European trophy. Able to draw on the seemingly bottomless resources of the country"s oil and gas giants, Russian football"s only problem was not so much meeting the salary demands of top players, but rather convincing them to make the move to a country still suffering from a major image problem.

Still, despite the difficulties of attracting genuine stars, Giner was certain that it was only a matter of time before the holy grail of European football found its way to Russia - preferably, one assumes, to CSKA"s

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