Russia fires coach as national team sinks

After five months in charge and six defeats Russia fired coach Anatoly Byshovets at the weekend.

Former coach Oleg Romantsev is set to step in for the rest of the Euro 2000 campaign which now looks a lost cause. The Russians will then consider their plans for the under-achieving national team next Autumn.

The Russians are set for a total rethink of the game in an effort to qualify for the next World Cup in 2002 but will still be feeling the effects of the massive financial crisis which overtook the country just weeks after Byshovets took charge last summer.

Byshovets walked out on St. Petersburg to take the national team position at the request of several politicians. He now claims that he was abandoned by these supporters in the wake of the financial crisis and significant losses to Ukraine, France and Iceland.

The national team appears to have hit a death spin and the return of Romantsev - fired after Euro 96 in a complicated row over bonus payments and poor discipline in the squad - will do little to help matters.