Yuri Belous, the president of the Football Market group of companies

Yuri Belous, the president of the Football Market group of companies, called the changes “a fighting reconnaissance mission”.

He told the BBC’s Russia Business Report that it would be great to have the luxury of implementing them during the period of 10 years, but added that “it is the way it is”.

Mr Belous believes that RFU officials had no choice but to require infrastructure upgrades.

“We do need to start somewhere,” said the expert.

“We have a lot of problems, but they need to be solved.”

Loss-making clubs Mr Fursenko has estimated that up to 10bn roubles ($324m, £204m) would be needed for infrastructure upgrades.

He suggested that the money would come from federal and regional governments, as well as from private investors.

But the lower league clubs are not convinced they will have enough funds to meet the new requirements.

“They were told to expect [financial] help, but no details were given,” said Russian sports expert Dmitry Navosha, director general of sport.ru web portal.

“Absolutely all Russian football clubs are loss-making, thus they have to get money from regional budgets and companies,” he told the BBC’s Russia Business Report.

As even top Russian clubs still make little money from television rights sold both in Russia and abroad, most of them are thought to operate with a deficit of at least several million dollars.

Football clubs in Russia tend to keep their budgets secret. CSKA Moscow, the 2005 Uefa Cup winner, has been one of the exceptions.