Russia’s football bosses are considering whether to fire national coach Fabio Capello after a loss to Austria seriously dented the team’s hopes of qualifying for Euro 2016.
After Sunday’s 1-0 home defeat to Austria left Russia third in its Euro 2016 qualifying group, Russian Football Union acting president Nikita Simonyan told the R-Sport agency the body “will discuss” whether to remove Capello.
Italian-born Capello has coached Russia since 2012 and was handed a four-year contract extension last year to lead Russia through to its home World Cup in 2018, but recent results have been poor.
Russia won just two of its last 10 competitive games, with one win coming against tiny Liechtenstein and the other awarded by default when a match against Montenegro was abandoned due to crowd trouble.
Russian football has been marked by controversy in recent weeks as the corruption scandal unfolding around FIFA has put Russia's status as host of the 2018 World Cup in jeopardy.
Switzerland's federal prosecutor will make a statement about his criminal investigation of FIFA's 2018 and 2022 World Cup bid contests for the first time Wednesday at a news conference in Bern.
Attorney General Michael Lauber's department raided FIFA headquarters to seize evidence on May 27.
On the same day, Swiss authorities raided a Zurich hotel and arrested seven officials linked to FIFA for a separate United States federal investigation of bribery and racketeering.
The Swiss case is targeting possible criminal mismanagement and money laundering in bidding campaigns won by Russia and Qatar, respectively.
