The annual PFL conference, which took place in the Central Tourist House yesterday, went very smoothly against all odds, without any heated discussions and public demarches. All professional Russian football clubs adopted the creation of the Premier League, which will hold the country's championship among the elite teams in cooperation with the PFL. The main outcome of the conference was adopting the new structure of the Russian football, which will come into force in 2003, says SE-Internet special correspondent Pavel DEMESHIK.

During the PFL Council meeting and councils of clubs of all divisions that took place the day before have outlined five variants of the future championship structure, to which they added the 6th yesterday. After discussing the details and announcing points of view of different clubs' unions a compromise structure was selected by the general vote; now it has to be adopted by the RFS executive committee.

Starting from 2003 Russian professional football returns to the 4-stage formula of conducting championship (the similar situation was in the mid 90-ies): Premier League (16 leading country's teams), first division (20 clubs), second division (the strongest clubs of the present third division). The third division will be reduced from 6 to 5 zones, each comprising 16 to 20 clubs, depending from the region.

There was no expected demarche of the first league clubs. Just before the conference they confirmed their decisiveness to stay within the PFL system. On the whole the conference went quite smoothly and peacefully, the question of establishing independent non for-profit partnership "First division" wasn't even raised.