Born in 1956 in Leningrad, there was little doubt that David Traktovenko would grow up a fan of local side Zenit. While he was also a keen follower of both basketball and ice hockey, football was his main love as he explained in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald in 2011, “All the kids were playing football, I played in the backyard. I never played professionally, but I played at school, at university, with my friends. I was a midfielder. At 10 years of age, my dad took me to the stadium for the first time to watch Zenit, and since that day they became part of my everyday life.”
However, the Zenit team Traktovenko grew up with was far from the powerhouse we see today, and it wasn’t until 1984 the city of Leningrad finally experienced the club winning the Soviet championship, the only one in the club’s history. By then, Traktovenko had already taken a degree in credit and finance from the current Saint Petersburg State University of Economics and Finance, but that hadn’t stopped him from following the Blue-White-Sky Blues, and he celebrated the club’s first title in 40 years together with the rest of the city.
After getting his degree, he started working for a local bank, but as Traktovenko came closer to the top of society, Zenit struggled, and in 1989 the Blue-White-Sky Blues were relegated to the Soviet First League, alongside Lokomotiv Moscow, where they stayed until the brilliant Pavel Sadyrin guided them back to the top flight for the 1996 season. At that time Traktovenko had already become an important man in the young Russian Federation, holding board member seats at both Vyborg-Bank and Promstroibank.
As any sensible football fan would have, Traktovenko opted to invest some of his hard earned money into his favourite club, and between 2002 and 2005 he was owner and head of the board of directors at Zenit. At this time, Russian football was dominated by the Moscow sides Spartak, Lokomotiv and CSKA, who all had significantly larger budgets than Zenit.
Therefore, Traktovenko had not only to invest in the squad, but also to improve the entire infrastructure of the club. “We modernized the administration,” he said in 2011 in one of his few major interviews, “We created a football department to deal with everything from the academy to the professionals. We wanted homegrown talent.”
And homegrown talent they got. By the time Traktovenko joined the club, Vyacheslav Malafeev, Aleksandr Kerzhakov and Andrey Arshavin were all established young players, and others such as Igor Denisov and Vladimir Bystrov soon joined them on the first team, creating the foundation that took Zenit to the top of European football just a few years later.
After finishing 10th in 2002, Zenit’s results quickly improved as they finished second the following season under the guidance of Czech Head Coach Vlastimil Petrzela with Kerzhakov as the top scorer.
Then, in 2006, Gazprom came along, and bought the club. Traktovenko, and his partner Vladimir Kogan, made $36.247 million selling the club before the energy giant invested even more heavily in the club, developing it to conquer Europe and win the UEFA Cup in 2008.
“At that time, the club started a new chapter in their development,” Traktovenko later revealed. “We received a very attractive offer from Gazprom to become the major shareholder. I don’t think any club would say no to a shareholder of that size.”
Shortly before the Gazprom offer, Traktovenko became a founding shareholder at Sydney FC, which was created at the end of 2004. And instead of retiring, Traktovenko opted to dedicate himself even further to the new football adventure in the land down under together with his son-in-law Scott Barlow, which he later described as a ‘family decision’.
Then, in 2009, Traktovenko and his friend Paul Ramsey announced that they had purchased the controlling stake in the The Sky Blues with a combined 74 %. “Sydney FC has the most passionate and committed fans in the A-League and is ideally placed to grow its following and performance,” Traktovenko said, “I am excited to become more involved with the club’s direction.”
At the time of the takeover Sydney FC was considered the laughing stock of the A-League. Despite spending tons of money on expensive players, the club was a mess, lacking a clear profile and a plan for how to move forward.
Three years later, Traktovenko became the sole owner of the club, when Paul Ramsey scaled back his investments drastically, and that’s when the club really started to change.
His first order of business was to make Barlow the chairman of the club. Since then, Barlow has been in charge of the day-to-day operation. “We are pleased to now be in a position to increase our shareholding and fund the club into the future,” Barlow said, “We have been a shareholder in Sydney FC since day one and our passion and commitment to the club is as strong as ever.”
Soon after taking over the club, Traktovenko revealed how to make the club successful, and he chose a path not often connected to Russian club owners; stability. “My view is that stability is very important and that a coach should spend a number of years at the club,” he said. In the first four years of the club’s history, it went through four different managers, but after Czech manager Vitezslav Lavicka was hired in February 2009, the club finally got the continuity it needed, and it quickly paid off as the club won the league the following season for the first and only time.
At Zenit, Traktovenko had experienced the power of a successful academy, so at the end of 2009, Sydney FC set up their own academy with the aim of providing young players the technical and tactical knowledge needed to succeed at the highest level and thus develop youngsters to the first team.
Just like at Zenit, Traktovenko also invested heavily in the infrastructure at the club, focusing especially on the business side such as sales and marketing, and once again the Russian’s efforts paid off. Developing from being somewhat of a bottomless pit, Sydney FC now have the second-highest turnover in the A-League.
To reach this stage, Traktovenko and the club had to make some risky moves though. In 2012 alone, the club lost AU$7 million, but instead of cutting the budget, the club opted for a more aggressive approach, signing Italian legend Alessandro Del Piero on a AU$4 million a year salary, making him the highest paid player in the league’s history. After signing the former Juventus ace, the club experienced a 57 % rise in their home crowd, making him an enormous success both off and on the field, where he scored 24 goals in 48 games before leaving the club in 2014.
Unfortunately, Sydney failed to make the finals during Del Piero’s stay down under, and the club is yet to copy the success of 2010. This season however, the Sky Blues seem to be able to finally live up to the expectations of the fans as they currently lead the A-League and remain unbeaten after the first eight rounds, and with the performances on the pitch finally matching those off the pitch, it seems that Traktovenko’s dream of the Sky Blues becoming a major brand in Asia is coming closer to being true.
Check out the other articles in the series here.
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