KEIR RADNEDGE EXCLUSIVE —- Alexei Fedoricsev is a pioneer, the football fan who led the way for Russian investors in western European football.

Fedoricsev’s loyalty for the past two decades – long before Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea – has been to Monaco. There it remains.

He is not the only Russian at Monaco now since business associate Dmitri Rybolovlev owns 66pc of the club. But Rybolovlev ‘arrived’ only in 2011. Fedoricsev, by contrast, has underpinned Monaco’s security through sponsorship for the past two decades.

Fans may fret over the star-sale strategy – Bernardo Silva, Tiemoue Bakayoko, Benjamin Mendy and most notably Kylian Mbappe this year alone – but Fedoricsev has no doubts about its wisdom.

And, as he says about all his decisions: “I never change my mind.”

Not for Fedoricsev the inner conflict of the businessman/fan which prompts risky decisions. For Fedoricsev, maintaining a balance between business and sport is essential.

His office sits a five-minute walk from the famed Casino de Monte-Carlo but Fedoricsev’s words and actions are not those of a gambler. He is outwardly modest about his influence at AS Monaco. But the moment he talks money there is no doubt he has all the figures at his fingertips and in his head.

The same with his multi-million-dollar business empire. Fedoricsev is hands-on. Literally. He says: “I don’t have a computer. I don’t have email. Just a telephone. My contract is my handshake.”

Over 20 years Fedoricsev’s Monaco-based company, Fedcominvest, has invested well over $100m in Monaco. Fedoricsev does not play with words. He is the main ‘sponsor’. Not for him the sport/business euphemism of ‘partner’.

It’s been a long journey for a boy from a “normal poor family like everyone else growing up in the Soviet Union.”

Father was a Spartak fan but for Alexei, growing up with a love both football and ice hockey, it was “Dynamo, Dynamo, Dynamo though I don’t know why.”

A promising defender, he crossed paths during military service with several future internationals but “this was the 1980s when something started to change in Russia so I started to think about what business was possible.”

Fedoricsev built his business before the communist collapse. He says: “This was nothing to do with the privatisations. Nothing. I was working before the days of the guys with the big yachts. I only ever invested the money I had made.”

He began in a spare parts business. That took him onto brake pads, to repair centres, to construction, to timber, to fertilisers, to phosphates, to wheat, to steel and shipping. The journey also took Fedoricsev to Geneva and then Monaco.

Here he was persuaded by rights agent Jean-Claude Darmon to sponsor AS Monaco. Simtaneously, Fedoricsev accepted an invitation to become general director at his first love, Dynamo Moscow.

Monaco visit Besiktas of Istanbul tomorrow in Champions League Group G

Fedoricsev, at Dynamo, spent more than $100m on players from Brazil and Portugal thanks to the wheeler-dealing of super-agent Jorge Mendes (who now does good business with Monaco). But by 2007 he had run into too many other vested interests at Dynamo and quit.

“Dynamo: A great name now but nothing else,” he says sadly and focuses his football attention on Monaco. Rybolovlev is a business associate while Monaco’s director-general and transfers supremo, Vadim Vasilyev, was a Fedcom vice-president between 1997 and 1999.

Fedoricsev describes Vasilyev as “a very clever gentleman. Very intelligent.” That intelligence, for Fedoricsev, has been perfectly illustrated by the club’s transfer strategy.

He says: “What is always very important is the atmosphere inside the dressing room. At Monaco this is very good, better I think than Paris Saint-Germain.”

This is one of the reasons Fedoricsev believes the Mbappe deal was timed perfectly. He says: “I think it was just right. It’s not easy to keep players in our world today. Young players start to think about big amounts of money very quickly. An agent comes to you, to your father, to your mother . . . so the player starts to think.

“This is a very important moment. Better to accept the good deal and do it without emotion.”

In other words: Good business.

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