Nearly 80 per cent of Russians want a foreign coach to run the national soccer team after the country's poor showing at the World Cup.

In a national poll conducted by the Sport-Express newspaper at the weekend, 79.6 per cent of the 14,000 Russians asked said they were in favour of a foreigner replacing Oleg Romantsev after their team was eliminated in the first round.

After beating Tunisia 2-0, the Russians lost their next two games, 1-0 to Japan and 3-2 to Belgium.

Their failure to progress from what was regarded as one of the easiest groups prompted the immediate resignation of Romantsev.

In the poll, former Italy goalkeeper Dino Zoff, who led his country to World Cup triumph in 1982, received 29.2 per cent of the votes.

He was followed by former Lazio and Milan coach Alberto Zaccheroni and Dane Richard Moller-Nielsen, who quit as coach of the Israeli national team earlier this year.

Last month, two Russian oil executives, ashamed of their team's World Cup showing, offered to pay up to $1 million per year out of their own pockets to hire a foreign coach.

The Russian media has also called for an independent foreign coach to take over from Romantsev, who was accused of "cowardly defensive tactics" when they played against Belgium needing only a draw to progress.

However, Vyacheslav Koloskov, president of the Russian Football Union (RFU), played down the chances of an overseas coach being appointed, saying a foreigner would face an uphill battle against Russia's conservative football establishment.

"I'm not too sure that we need a foreign coach," Koloskov was quoted as saying by Sport-Express. "We have many Russian coaches, who have won various honours in their own right, and in my view, without their support it will be very difficult for anyone to succeed here."

Most people familiar with the RFU, say CSKA Moscow coach Valery Gazzayev and his Lokomotiv Moscow counterpart, Yuri Syomin, are the two front-runners for the national team job. The RFU is expected to name the new coach by next week.