"North Caucasus" newspaper: news, politics, society, culture, customs, traditions of the Northern Caucasus

«NC» has repeatedly raised the issue of «correspondence deputies». A person lives God knows where, is connected with Stavropol not in the very least, but is praised here as people’s defender. This particularly often happens to showmen and athletes. Stavropol can hardly be called «the birthplace of stars». One can count on one hand those born or grew up in our city. Perhaps the brightest luminary in the list is the forward of the London football club «Tottenham» and Russia’s national team Roman Pavlyuchenko. Though he was born in Kuban, his sporting star rose in the regional capital: he studied at the Stavropol Sport children’s and youth school of Olympic reserve in football, from where in 1999 got to his first professional team - «Dinamo Stavropol». The team tried to force its way to the highest league, but failed, hereupon the leaders left the team, and it was staffed with the youth from sport school. However, after the first season played for «Dinamo», the young football player with growing ambitions moved to Volgograd. Ten years later Pavlyuchenko suddenly remembered that some thinnest threads once tied him to Stavropol. More precisely, not he remembered, but the local «United Russia», which included the talked-up footballer in its party list for the elections to the City Duma. Pavlyuchenko got to the local Parliament - probably because of the tight schedule he did not find time to fly from London to Stavropol and submit refusal of deputyship. In the City Duma the football player for some reason was in the Committee on Information Policy. Pavlyuchenko did not appear at any Duma meetings. However, as leader of the faction of «United Russia» Ivan Bogdanov has repeatedly assured journalists, «we solve all the issues by phone». However, a couple of weeks ago Pavlyuchenko paid a visit to Stavropol. The first in many years! He met with the Governor and colleagues deputies, held a master class for young football players, signed autographs, promised to build a football academy named after him in the city and returned back to London.