Ex-Manchester United star Andrei Kanchelskis has opened up about the frightening threats he was handed by four gangsters.
The Russian was first introduced to English football when Sir Alex Ferguson signed him from Shakhtar Donetsk in 1991. He played 27 games in the first season of the newly-formed Premier League in the 1992/93 where the Red Devils won the title, breaking a 26-year drought.
He enjoyed four seasons in total in Manchester as he won four major trophies before enjoying notable stints at both Everton and Rangers. The former winger hung up his boots in 2006 as he soon headed into management.
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The 54-year-old has had two spells in charge of Uzbekistan Super League club Navbahor Namangan with his second stint at the club ending bitterly as he alleged that he went without payment for four months. He soon filed an appeal with FIFA as the governing body ordered Navbahor to pay Kanchelskis over £1.28million ($1.6million).
His demand for the hefty payment saw him be threatened by four gangsters while at a cafe and he was warned that he'd be "disabled for life" should he not lessen his compensation demands. "The club owed me compensation due to earnings lost in the COVID pandemic, and four guys from Chechnya weren't happy that I'd asked for the payments when I was sacked," Kanchelskis told FourFourTwo Magazine.
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"The four men approached me while I was eating in a café and informed me that I would be 'disabled for life' if I didn't lower my demands. I told the police about it and luckily everything was sorted in the end." Following his claims, the club chastised Kanchelskis and accused him of being "absent from the workplace" in a scathing statement.
It read: "Despite the fact that Andrei Kanchelskis accuses the club's management of being amateur, the same 'football specialist', during his time at the club, managed to show every disrespect to the hierarchy. "This led to the fact that our team began to lose points. After the last time Andrei left the club without our permission, we made the decision to finally part with him."
