A huge influx of foreign footballing and managerial talent into Russian football in recent years has boosted the standard and profile of the domestic league but also raised fears about a drought of home-grown players. In the USSR, football existed exclusively on players trained under the rigorous Soviet system but since the 1990s a steady drip of foreign footballers into post-Communist Russia has turned into a flood.
Now fans can enjoy watching stars such as Anzhi Makhachkala's Cameroon striker Samuel Eto'o or Zenit St Petersburg's new signing Hulk of Brazil, with league teams managed by the likes of Dutchman Guus Hiddink or Italy's Luciano Spalletti. But with Russia hoping for home glory when it hosts the World Cup in 2018, the transformation has left football chiefs with a dilemma: how far to welcome foreign talent without harming the domestic system? There is even debate about whether Russia could use some of the foreign players in the national side by giving them Russian nationality.
Top flight side Alania Vladikavkaz for example has stepped in to help their Brazilian forward Danilo Neco get Russian citizenship, while Spartak Moscow striker Welliton, also from Brazil, said he was keen on playing for Russia. CSKA Moscow's Alan Dzagoev and Dynamo's Alexander Kokorin apart, Russian football is suffering from a lack of young talent after the Soviet youth system collapsed along with the rest of the Red Empire in 1991.
Russian Football Union (RFU) chief Nikolai Tolstykh said naturalising foreign players could be considered - but only in exceptional circumstances. "The naturalisation of foreign players is possible but only as an exceptional case. These will only be the players who are really indispensable for the national side," he told the Izvestia daily.
"The main goal of the RFU is to prepare the new players for the national squad in the under-18, under-21 and the Russian B team." So far, no foreign footballer has ever been awarded a Russian passport to represent the country. But there are precedents in other sports.
Russia granted citizenship to former South Korea Olympic champion Ahn Hyun-Soo to represent the country at the Sochi 2014 Games in short track speed-skating while a key player in the Russian women's basketball team is the US-born star Becky Hammon. Another huge issue is a possible cap on foreign players - known as "legioneri" in Russian - playing at any one time in domestic league matches to ensure home talent has a chance to develop.
Currently a maximum of seven foreign players are allowed to take to the field at any one time so there are always at least four Russians involved. But for the richest Russian clubs - owned by billionaires with seemingly bottomless pockets - the quota system imposes an uncomfortable restriction.
CSKA Moscow president Yevgeny Giner said the new limit when the Premiership clubs can field seven foreigners as match starters, fits the demands of modern football better that the previous rule of 6+5, which was introduced in 2005. "Modern football is a kind of show," Giner told the Sport Express daily. "But there is no point inviting foreign stars to Russia if they are just going to disappear in the crowd of mediocre footballers who received a place in the line-up only due to the limit."
The dearth of young talent, however, casts a shadow over the prospects of Russia's national side, who failed to qualify for the 2006 and 2010 World Cups and crashed out of the group stages at Euro 2012. Tolstykh, 56, chosen as Russian football chief in September after the European championship debacle, has said he wanted set to review the limit and vowed to do everything possible to nurture young, home-grown talent. Russia manager Fabio Capello has also raised fears about the current quota, saying it gives him too limited a pool of players to choose from. "There are 16 clubs in the Premier league," Capello told a news conference shortly after his appointment.