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“I’m in tears with joy. We’ve built a team that can compete with APOEL. This is just the beginning,” says Yevgeny Savin.

On an August evening, the president of the Krasava ENY Ypsonas football club sits in one of the upper tiers of the Ammochostos Stadium in Larnaca, looking out at the empty pitch.

The football club, which he had originally founded in Russia four years ago and re-registered in Cyprus after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has just made its debut in the country’s topflight. Although Krasava lost the match 2-1, the fact that it came against Cyprus’ most successful club, APOEL Nicosia, means that in Savin’s eyes, this was a success.

Former football turned YouTube star

Savin was a once professional footballer and was called up to the Russia’s U21 team several times in the 2000s. After his playing career ended, he became a media star, first as the host of a show on the sports channel Match TV, part of the state-owned media holding company Gazprom-Media. In 2018, he founded the YouTube channel “Krasava,” where he discussed Russia’s problems from a football perspective.

The Russian word “Krasava” is youth slang, a word that expresses respect. It also incorporates the abbreviation of Savin’s surname, “Sava.”

Savin currently has a million followers on Instagram and YouTube. Millions of views of his videos have brought him sponsorship deals and a considerable income. He earns up to €1.2 million ($1.4 million) a year, Savin tells DW. He founded the club in 2021, and Krasava initially competed in the third division of Russian football.

But immediately after the invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, Savin left Russia with his wife and two children. He condemned the war and released a video featuring Ukrainian athletes expressing their feelings about the invasion.

This led to Krasava being banned from training at a stadium in the Moscow region. Savin was eventually charged with “discrediting” the Russian army and sentenced to prison in absentia in Russia in March 2024.

Starting over

But fleeing Russia didn’t mean Savin was about to give up on the idea of owning his own football club. He had chosen Cyprus to go into exile because it is relatively cheap to run a professional football club there. In Ypsonas, a suburb of Limassol, Savin bought a local club’s license for several hundred thousand euros — to play in the country’s second division.

This is not the same legal entity as the Russian club Krasava, but a new one. However, the colors, the emblem, and above all, its president and the principles he had founded it on — as an “honest private club” — remain the same.

Savin has since sunk about €1.5 million of his own money into the club and has been helped by sponsorship from an online broker owned by a Russian-born billionaire who also turned his back on his homeland. This allowed the club to win promotion to the first division after just three seasons.

But life away from home is not without its downside, like being separated from his ailing father, who still lives in Russia and cannot travel.

“I feel guilty that we can’t see each other,” Savin says. He once wrote to him: “Dad, forgive me. I couldn’t help it,” he says, referring to his public criticism of the war and decision to leave Russia.

Makeshift office

Savin welcomes the DW reporter to his club’s training facility at a sports complex in Limassol. It consists of two small artificial turf pitches and a roughly 20-square-meter room behind a glass door, which has been converted into an office.

In one corner, there is a small table displaying the trophy and a gold medal from last season’s second division championship, as well as an icon of St. Sava, that was given to him by a priest.

His club, Savin admits, is still a “startup.” All of his employees multitask and work late into the night — just like he does.

“You have to set an example; that’s the only way to show that Krasava is more than just a football club and a job. We are a family,” Savin stresses.

Russians and Ukrainians supporting the same club

Krasava targets immigrants from post-Soviet countries as its fan base.

“Ninety percent of our fans speak Russian. Krasava unites people from Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, and other countries in the stands,” Savin says.

“It’s hard to imagine another place where people gather, shout together in Russian, and cheer on a football club.”

But his contributions to the Russian-speaking community go even further. Free weekly training sessions are offered on the club’s grounds for children from Russian- and Ukrainian-speaking families that receive support at the YASAM special therapy center in Limassol.

Many of the Krasava fans are young, Russian-speaking immigrants who work in the IT or finance sector in Cyprus and have only been living on the island for a few years. One of them, Aleksandr from Moscow, says he often goes to Krasava games with people from various post-Soviet countries. “They are my friends, friends of friends — people who love football and speak Russian. We went there once and were immediately hooked. We liked the community.”

Aiming even higher

Yevgeny Savin, of course, also attends the games. He stands among the fans in the stands, takes selfies, discusses the game, and leads enthusiastic chants — and he continues to dream big.

“The next step is to qualify for European club competitions,” he says. “So that the whole world learns about the Krasava football club and its history, which, I’m sure, is inspiring.”

This article was originally written in Russian.