Zhas Alash Newspaper are in high dudgeon about governmental officials, who made attempts to justify high bonuses we pay to expat athletes.

Last week, our top CFO and Vice-Premier Erulan Zhamaubayev expressed his opinion on high salaries we pay to expat hockey players:

You all follow sports. Take a look at those championships and major tournaments. Take the last world cup. Pay attention to Leo Messi and his team – they play for a rich club in Argentina. First class players strengthen national championships. To make it to victory, we need the best, the strongest sportsmen…

That was the said official’s attempt to justify the salaries we pay to expat hockey players. Earlier, we discussed that Nikita Mikhailis and Linden Vey from HC Barys make KZT 337 million a year. Michael Chaput, Anthony Louis and Jeremy Bracco (all three play for Barys HC) make some KZT 200 million a year. Igor Sergeyev, a footballer from Uzbekistan, playing for Tobol FC, gets paid KZT 383 thousand a day, or KZT 11.5 million a month.

But we do not see that their contributions strengthen our national sports. It has been thirty years, that we waste money in vein.

How much those expat athletes get paid,  is never disclosed publicly. Sometimes, some fragments of information reach Mass Media. All we know is that Barys HC players get money from Samruk-Kazyna.  In other words – their high salaries come from us.

So, there are some questions we have: Why do they hide the sums of salaries paid to expat players, why do they not report to common people and assume responsibility?! If all that was in open sources and people had opportunity to see their reports, we would know the results.

Some people in this country get KZT 60 thousand a month. Some people are happy to get KZT 100 thousand. Is it fair? Why is it so, that the money appropriated by government for free sports circles for our children are depleted, but there always are funds to bring athletes from abroad?

Our sports bureaucrats repeat the same mantra – “Our goal is to develop the mass sports and to create conditions that would make our youth great champions”.

But we see nothing, but shallow words. Nobody even bothered to tell us, what particular great results we achieved now, after investing a whole fortune. Where are those kids, we sent to Brazil to study in their football academies? None of them plays with Kazakh clubs today. May be because, those were not the true talents, but children from top-ranking families?