Ruud Gullit’s Chechen adventure has come to an end. Ramzan Kadyrov, Terek Grozny’s chairman and the country’s leader, made good his threat of firing the former star coach if he didn’t pull up his socks. It could not have turned out worse: the Premier League game against Amkar Perm was lost by a last minute own goal.

‘Distracted by bars and disco’s’ the Chechen leader is supposed to have said, according to Nu.nl. Gullit dismisses the accusation ‘We went clubbing for an evening with the whole team as a team building exercise. If this sort of thing is levelled at you the day before an important game, you know the score.’
Gullit dates his demise as coach from an earlier defeat, against CSKA Moscow which is currently topping the league. ‘We never beat CSKA and weren’t expected to but somehow the result was held against us’.
Things didn’t get any better when Gullit told the Daily mail that the club had no fitness room and that attempts to buy players had been blocked. He also commented on the fact that Kadyrov never attended away games.
The Telegraaf quotes him as saying that not politics but football was his main motivation for going to the troubled state; ‘My presence at least put Terek Grozny on the map whereas before no one had heard of it’, ‘cold comfort for the Chechens’, the paper comments. It might have added that Terek Grozny is now languishing in 14th place, two place down from last year.
Gullit lasted six months in Grozny but his contract is for another year. ‘We have to negotiate a deal and then I will return to the Netherlands. This won’t look good on my cv but I have to say it’s been an adventure.’