The news about the deten­tion of Spar­tak strik­er Quin­cy Promes at Dubai air­port, which appeared on the evening of Feb­ru­ary 29 in the Baza telegram chan­nel, on the one hand, became sen­sa­tion­al, on the oth­er hand, it was expect­ed and even pre­dict­ed by many.

The 32-year-old play­er was detained at the bor­der con­trol of Al Mak­toum Air­port in Dubai after com­plet­ing Spar­tak’s train­ing camp in the UAE, which is why he was unable to return to Rus­sia with the team. The foot­ball play­er was sent to the air­port police sta­tion, accom­pa­nied by Spar­tak secu­ri­ty offi­cers. The rea­sons for the deten­tion are not yet clear, although they lie on the sur­face. Accord­ing to the Moscow club, he is in con­stant con­tact with law enforce­ment agen­cies to clar­i­fy all the cir­cum­stances of the arrest.

What threatens Promes?

The sit­u­a­tion for the play­er and the club is com­pli­cat­ed by the fact that just two weeks ago, on Feb­ru­ary 14, Promes was sen­tenced by a court in the Nether­lands to 6 years in prison for smug­gling almost one and a half tons of cocaine. This is not count­ing the con­vic­tion he already had for attack­ing his cousin with a knife. For this episode, the Dutch­man pre­vi­ous­ly received 1.5 years in prison. Fol­low­ing the sec­ond ver­dict, the Dutch pros­e­cu­tor’s office on Feb­ru­ary 16 put Quin­cy on the inter­na­tion­al want­ed list.

How­ev­er, even this cir­cum­stance did not stop the red-and-white for­ward, who, as usu­al, went to train­ing camp with the team in the UAE. Con­sid­er­ing that the Emi­rates peri­od­i­cal­ly extra­dite crim­i­nals upon request from the Nether­lands, the foot­ball player’s idea to go to this coun­try was not the smartest. Per­haps this deci­sion was influ­enced by the fact that Quin­cy was already in the Emi­rates in ear­ly Jan­u­ary, where he cel­e­brat­ed his 32nd birth­day, and this did not have any con­se­quences for him then.

But now the sit­u­a­tion has changed. On Feb­ru­ary 27, the Nether­lands announced that Promes had not filed an appeal against his drug smug­gling con­vic­tion. From Feb­ru­ary 14, he had two weeks to file a request for a review of the case — dur­ing this peri­od he was legal­ly con­sid­ered inno­cent. On Feb­ru­ary 28, this peri­od expired and the deci­sion entered into legal force; on the 29th, Promes was detained.

What’s next?

It is impor­tant to empha­size that there is still no exact infor­ma­tion about the rea­sons for Promes’ deten­tion in Dubai. The offi­cial bod­ies are silent, the club has so far refrained from com­ment­ing, all this only increas­es the mis­un­der­stand­ing and anx­i­ety of Spar­tak fans.

Obvi­ous­ly, ques­tions are raised not only by the footballer’s deten­tion itself, but also by the fact of his stay in the UAE, giv­en the legal con­text of the case. This deci­sion is even more incom­pre­hen­si­ble if we remem­ber that last year Promes missed the same win­ter train­ing camp in the Emi­rates due to the threat of arrest in the case of an attack on a rel­a­tive and trained in Moscow. This time, hav­ing risked going to the Emi­rates amid more seri­ous claims against him in a crim­i­nal drug case, the foot­ball play­er seems to have sim­ply ignored the pos­si­ble con­se­quences.

Now, regard­less of the out­come of this inci­dent, ques­tions about the future of the Dutch foot­baller at Spar­tak are even loud­er. There are two key points to con­sid­er here:

The play­er, whose trans­fer val­ue is esti­mat­ed at 6 mil­lion euros, is now the cen­ter of atten­tion not only of the club, but of the entire foot­ball com­mu­ni­ty in Rus­sia. The end to Promes’ future at Spar­tak may be reached in the near future, and the club will have to make a dif­fi­cult deci­sion.