“I watched the game and I didn’t like it at all. Every team has its problems. We can say that the flight was difficult, or something else. But every club has its fans, and I am very ashamed of Samara, who have a multimillion army of fans. The Russian Football Union Commission on Ethics will be analyzing this match”, Vitaly Mutko said to Sportbox.ru.

He added that ultimately it would be a matter for police to deal with.

Bookmakers saw a suspiciously high percentage of bets on a Terek win, before some suspended betting altogether.

Terek's coach Vyacheslav Grozny and the club’s president have denied all the claims, and Chechen President, and the team’s greatest fan, Ramzan Kadyrov believes them.

“We do not need such fixed victories. I just don’t understand how this is possible. It’s unpleasant even to talk about it. We never rig victories. We are not like that,” Ramzan Kadyrov said to Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.

He added that the top teams in the Russian Premier League won’t sell games because they have no shortage of money.

Straight after the match, rumors appeared that Krylia coach Leonind Sloutsky is leaving his job, despite the club having one of their best seasons in recent years. A win in Grozny would have allowed them to go top of the Russian Premier League ahead of summer break.

But the coach himself calmed the fans, announcing that he’ll stay with team. He also said the Grozny match fitted all the fair play standards, denying the fixing allegations.

“This was a real game of football, although, yes, both sides committed a lot of mistakes. As a result, we were losing first, then managed to come back into the game, but in the end conceded a goal. There were a lot of harsh tackles and even injuries. So it’s senseless to speak about match-fixing,” Leonid Sloutsky said.

Football game or theatrical performance? (Image from kc-samara.ru)

He added that people, “have been paying too much attention to the betting firms, recently”.

And Krylia Sovietov’s biggest name – Jan Koller – says he doesn’t believe the game was fixed.

The Czech striker didn’t appear on the pitch in the Chechen capital, which also raised suspicions. Later it was announced that he had suffered an asthma attack.

“I don’t think that the Krylia players gave the game away. If I’d found out the game was fixed, I would have left the team,” Jan Koller said.

Menawhile, the Russian Premier League says there are no grounds to carry out a full investigation yet.

This is not the first scandal involving Terek Grozny. Last year, referees sent an open letter to the Russian Premier League and Russia’s Football Union. It said they refused to work in Chechnya if cases of psychological and physical pressure on the arbiters continued there.

It followed an incident after Terek’s game against Lokomotiv Moscow, when referee Aleksey Kovalev was beaten up by unidentified persons in the Dinamo arena.

Back then, Grozny team’s stadium was disqualified and the club was fined 500.000 rubles (around $13.000).