What is the difference?

The athletes have some kind of epidemic-all in T-shirts with Putin! Now here is the hockey player Ovechkin in a T -shirt with the image of Putin and Shoigu (in one, so to speak, the bottle), he supported the boxer Fedor Chudinov through Instagram, wishing him victory in a battle with an opponent from Germany. Well, and the people, of course, remembered about the football player Tarasov, which I will not retell the bosses, because all your ears were buzzing about it.

But if stories are similar, this does not mean that they are the same. And personally, I am calm about Ovechkin’s act, and I treat Tarasov as natural idiocy.

What is the difference? In everything except Mike. To start with the fact that the football player Tarasov simply violated the rules. The specific points of the specific regulations prohibiting not only political, but also any other agitation, propaganda and demonstration - political, religious and even personal! If Tarasov went out in a T -shirt with an appeal to support the boxer Chudinov, he would be punished just as well! So recorded in the rules.

In Instagram, Mike with Putin and Shoigu does not violate anything. I am only sorry that Ovechkin, whom I, as an athlete, respectly, adheres to my views unsympathetic to me. But the presence of certain addictions is not a crime.

In addition, Tarasov and Tarachka performed after a match lost with shame, and looked stupid. And Ovechkin, if not the best hockey player in the world, is definitely the coolest and most popular.

More than once, these days I spoke and wrote that patriotism for an athlete is victory. Under the flag of the country or victory, which associate the name of the champion with his country. So all over the world they know that Ovechkin from Russia and he is a champion. And Tarasov is a loser. And for the country did nothing at all. Therefore, they look different in such outfits.

And finally, there is another point. Ovechkin plays the NHL for Washington Capitals. And he is not alone. There are two more of our guys in the team - Evgeny Kuznetsov and Dmitry Orlov. And it is precisely these people for the local public who personifies our country. And their popularity in the city is incredible! Ovechkin is generally the most popular person in the city, and in Washington, as you know, other famous people live. But even Obama once said that "I am glad to live in the same city with Ovechkin."

And Sasha Ovechkin, unlike all our politicians, including those who are painted on his T -shirt, is one of the few who creates in America and in the world a generally decent and interesting image of Russia and Russians. This is his difference with Dmitry Tarasov ...

... Although, of course, I really feel sorry that these faces were on the Ovechkinsky T -shirt. Well, in the end, a person may have the right not only to belief, but also to errors.




Photo: 1. Türkiye. Istanbul. February 16, 2015. Lokomotiv player Dmitry Tarasov after the first match of the 1/16 finals of the UEFA Europa League against Fenerbahche. Emrah Gurel/Ar/TASS

2. Russia. Moscow. May 27. Russian President Vladimir Putin (second on the left), players of the Russian national hockey team Danis Zaripov (left), Nikolai Kulemin and Alexander Ovechkin (from right to left) during the awarding ceremony of the Russian hockey national team, who won the world championship in the Minsk, in the Kremlin. Mikhail Metzel/TASS