Pass back: the country's authorities are seriously thinking about the temporary cancellation of fan passports

The stands of Russian stadiums at the matches of the national Football Championship, which resumed after a long break, were a truly shameful sight. So, a little more than 4 thousand spectators came to the stadium of the most popular team of the country - Spartak Moscow in Tushin, which accommodates more than 40 thousand people. And for a much more spacious stadium of the championship leader Zenit St. Petersburg - less than 20 thousand.

One mediocre match in Spain collects more

The channel "First Sport" publishes data on how the attendance of RPL matches has changed after the introduction of mandatory use of Fan ID at Russian stadiums (the last match in autumn vs the first match in spring):

- "Torch" Voronezh: 13578 –> 10321 (-24%)

- Zenit St. Petersburg: 34565 –> 19705 (-43%)

- Akhmat Grozny: 8047 –> 4100 (-49%)

- Spartak Moscow: 13457 –> 4281 (-68%)

- "Krasnodar": 33757 –> 7965 (-76%)

- Dynamo Moscow: 25048 –> 4943 (-80%)

Journalist Kirill Shulika also made calculations, and it turned out that the seven matches of the RPL of this round gathered 56,132 spectators, which is even less than the number of spectators at only one game of the Spanish championship between Atletico and Sevilla, that is, the third team of Spain against the 17th. 57,737 people gathered at the Civitas Metropolitano Stadium in Madrid.

"Thanks to Sochi and CSKA, their audience of 4 thousand will allow the entire RPL to bypass one not the top match of the Spanish Championship in attendance.

In addition, the audience of eight RPL matches will now fit in one Zenit stadium in St. Petersburg. That is, the arena was built for one club, but now it can accommodate fans of all sixteen teams. I'm not talking about Luzhniki at all. Fans of the First League teams can easily fit there.

No one wants to voluntarily go into digital slavery

It is absolutely clear that not only fans, but also ordinary fans in no way succumb to the persuasions of the authorities to issue a FAN ID and go to stadiums calmly.

And they are right, because they know perfectly well that the repression of the Russian state has no borders and will easily spread from football fields to all other spheres of Russian life. And even the most stubborn patriots do not want to take risks.

Shulika revealed some of the reasons for the authorities' manic desire to take control of stadiums:

"It is considered that by introducing FAN ID, the state, represented by law enforcement agencies, is fighting the fan subculture as an unauthorized organized group of strong guys. However, this clearing was cleared before the 2018 World Cup, and all sorts of riots at stadiums have not occurred for the last 10 years for sure. That is, there is nothing to fight with. But even if we imagine that no one removed these tasks from the security forces, then FAN ID is absolutely not needed to solve them. Ex-FSB director Sergei Stepashin expressed the opinion that it is enough to sell football tickets on a passport for order, and he does not understand the meaning of introducing "fan, leave".

In order to understand the meaning of innovations, it is necessary to read the transcript of the only recent public discussion of them. At a meeting with Vladimir Putin, the head of the Ministry of Finance Maksut Shadaev reported on the FAN ID, along with the question of the introduction of electronic civil passports, that is, cards with a chip on which it is planned to record all information about a citizen. Now, as part of the preparation, we see not only the FAN ID, but also the popularization of biometric passports (by the way, their owners do not need to visit the MFC to get a FAN ID). But there is one problem with them — the lack of chips after the introduction of sanctions, so so far biometrically passports are not issued. So, only the passports of the fans remain in order to accustom the population to the painful coming digitalization..."

It is better not to tighten the nuts yet

These facts were not ignored by the authorities: popular MP Vitaly Milonov said that he was preparing an initiative to cancel the Fan ID.

According to him, https://t.me/rbsportrb/10761 , the idea is already "at the final stage" and they can listen to it.

Experts of the channel "MIG of Russia" comment on the situation in this way:

"As for the Fan ID, it would be reasonable to suspend the operation of this law at least until a calmer, measured life comes to our country.

An absolutely unnecessary point of tension is being created, and among the socially active part of our society, which are football fans.

The only way not to break the thread by tightening the nuts is to twist in one place, relax in another. In this case, it is better to relax..."

And who will reimburse the losses?

And here are the analysts of the Arena channel.

Nezygar" is wondering who will be responsible for the failure of the idea:

"It's not the fact of Fan-ID cancellation that is interesting, it will definitely happen sooner or later. Another thing is interesting: what kind of punishment will the initiator of this Law be punished for multibillion-dollar spending of budget funds, deceiving the country's leadership and creating social tension in society from scratch?! At a time when the whole society needs to unite, it feels like the founders of Fan-ID are deliberately causing discord. Will the person who, at every Fan-ID meeting, foamed at the mouth, proved to everyone the importance and necessity of this Law, pushed it through in every possible way, deceiving his leadership, be publicly punished? I convinced the club presidents that these fans would leave and others would come. In the end, no one came..."

Boycott is able to resist terror

Network analyst Anatoly Nesmian believes that the authorities are now frantically looking for a way to save face:

"The authorities realized that they had gone a little too far with the Fan-ID, and now they are looking for options on how to get out of this story, but if possible without losing face. So far, Milonov has been charged so that he suddenly takes care of the problems of football fans and demands to repeal or revise the law.

However, the same Milonov and his EP party perfectly voted for the same law in the same edition, so they will rule themselves.

But once again the same rule works: even in the conditions of a regime that has staked on terror, it is quite possible to resist it. Boycott becomes an extremely effective mechanism that allows the authorities to change their decisions. Fan-ID is a special case, but it fits perfectly into the system of structureless resistance to terror..."