Anzhi Makhachkala plays in a old 20,000-seat stadium in a city so dangerous that the players practice 1,200 miles away.
It might also be Europe's next soccer superpower.
The team was bought last January by Russian oligarch Suleyman Kerimov.
In the 14 months since, Kerimov has brought some of the biggest stars in the game to Russia, and vowed to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on infrastructure.
The odds are against Anzhi. But if Kerimov succeeds and turns the team into a perennial Champions League contender, it'll be one of the most incredible turn-arounds in sports history.
Russian oligarch Suleyman Kerimov bought Anzhi in 2011 and promised to pour buckets of cash into the team
Anzhi was pretty terrible before Kerimov bought them.
They wallowed in the second tier of Russian soccer for awhile before making it back to the Russian Premier League in 2009.
Kerimov has a $200-million investment plan that involves improving the facilities to bring them up to UEFA standards.
One little issue: The Dagestan region of Russia where Makhachkala is located is really, really dangerous
Dagestan is only 124 miles north of Iran, and is unstable right now.
Russia sent 20,000 troops to the region last month, and the region has long been plagued by violence from separatist terrorist groups.
It's rumored that 100 police are killed in the region every year, according to the New York Times.
It's so dangerous that the team is based in Moscow, and only travels to Makhachkala for home games
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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