Collective farm

In order to dominate hockey, it will have to be returned to the USSR - this is the main result of the youth championship of the World failure for the Russian national team

I had the feeling that Roman Rotenberg says in the voice of Igor Larionov. Well, an absolutely adequate and rather pragmatic professor cannot carry all this nonsense about the control of washers as the basis of the attacking combination hockey “in the best Soviet traditions”. A team, thoroughly intercepted, but quite capable of taking medals, went to the youth championship of the world with a trainer-departant in Edmonton. However, the desire of the ideologist and head coach to see the reincarnation of the Great Five of CSKA and the national team in today's players, turned out to be a grand failure. The hat was predictably out of Senka.

The defeat of Austria as a weaker team of the tournament is not counted. The rest are three victories and three defeats, with the difference in washers 12–19. In the playoffs-a tricked victory over the Germans, a complete failure in the semifinals with Canada and a humiliating defeat from the Finnish national team in the bronze match. By the way, Russian youth had never lost “comforting finals”.

Not a single "youth" in my memory before the World Cup was given so many advances. Not a single coach was praised as Igor Larionov, the Great Center for the Grand Former of the 80s of the last century, who bravely settled on the debut of 60 years. The course “Back to the Future”, repeatedly voiced by the new main, overwhelming most experts was recognized as almost the discovery of the year. The admiration of the features of the "great Soviet style" after the sensational success of the boys at the adult cup of the career was genuine. The specialists rubbed their hands from Channel One, anticipating the take -off of the ratings. It was supposed to please the country is guaranteed.

We expected a holiday with an indispensable gold finale. & Received a disgrace, the least in which the hockey players themselves are to blame.

The main reason was not voiced either at express distortions or at a working meeting in the Russian Hockey Federation following the results of an inglorious championship. In fact, I already called it: they tried to impose a style that in the current conditions and with a specific “material” was tried to embody it. The guys were blown so much that they did not know how to act. That is why it was a pity to look at the team in peak moments.

All that our hockey players could do is try to follow the instructions: to control the puck, enter the zone through the pass, act neatly and deliberately. And they just had to give play as they best could - of course, with the necessary adjustments. The world championship, even youth, is not the time for radical retraining of the generally already established players. The teams of Valery Bragin, who handed over to Larionov the helm of the "youth", in the already hardened skill, but primarily at the expense of a fighting nature, and traveled for almost the entire last decade. Yes, with only one gold, taken to Buffalo exactly ten years ago. But almost about any other Bragin team could be said that the guys did everything they could.

It is not difficult to sing the courage of “pioneers on the contrary”, to bring arguments in favor of beautiful and spectacular hockey, according to which the people have been missing for a long time, to complain that in our children and youth hockey we have someone in the forest, and in the end of the “Bey-Begi” style prevails. That, finally, people who challenged the primitive were found: a converter named Roman Rotenberg threw to the masses the idea of ​​returning a new “red car”, and the great Igor Larionov undertook to specifically and systematically embody it - so far at the youth level. Duster trouble begins, experience will come by itself, it will be easier. Actually, this is the whole pathos of the defenders of the tandem. Here is the head of the headquarters of all national teams, Vice President of the Federal Academy of Sciences of the FCH Rotenberg and said how he cut off: "We have everything to take a step forward and become champions at the next championship."

The idea of ​​a new “red car” was decorated five years ago, being successful mainly in the paraphernalia, which was not yet implaced on toilets and condoms (I have already seen pasta under this brand). Because for the entire “red five-year plan” the national team with great difficulty took only one title-on the “Nepolimpiysk”, without the participation of NHL players, a tournament in Pyeongchang-2018. There was no more gold at all levels. And it will not, while the invigoratic-utopian idea of ​​the return of the great Soviet style dominates.

For a second, I do not believe that Roman Borisovich Rotenberg, as a lively representative of the whole pro -government clan that was not seen in the altruism, does this sincerely, by virtue of his romantic nature. Behind a beautiful wrapper - a hard and pragmatic calculation:

The idea should appeal to the people who are longing for the imperial grandeur, which means that the chief hockey player of the country Vladimir Putin.

Everything that works for a positive image of power should be maintained total. True, the results are somehow not very good, but these are already trifles that should not distract from the main thing: a high end justifies any temporary difficulties. It’s not Russian hockey, but the collective farm “The Way to Communism”.

For the FHR, the figure of Igor Larionov seemed ideal for the role of the “chairman of the collective farm” - the best playmaker of the Soviet hockey, which embodied glorious traditions in overseas careers, which absorbed North American experience (this is nothing, excusable). To whom, if not the legendary Larionov to realize the ideas of the new hockey "regional committee"?

It is not uninteresting to discuss the deliberate global failure of the project. It is possible to return Soviet hockey in all its glory by returning the Soviet Union. Well, or some of its main features in the Russian framework. It is more difficult with the rest of the world, but the problem of corruption of external influence is solved by the closure of the boundaries and disconnecting the sources of information. And, of course, no foreign contracts, strict selection, starting from the children's level, no sending to the heroes of sports: ten months on the basis, the best forces in one or two teams, let them sink, bringing the functional state to perfection, and the interaction to automatism, which will lead to a triumph. Or it will not lead - it also depends on whether we will break the new Rene Fasel as the President of the International Hockey Federation to prohibit professionals in international competitions.

Our stars will be decorated with eternal students or, at worst, locksmiths.

Well, of course - utopia. Not safe if the results are replaced by slogans and mantra about the bright future. For this very matter, Igor Larionov received a carte blanche, which appears from the final meeting: “We continue to work as part of the current FHR strategy.” And a few more quotes from Larionov: “We were indicated to the mistakes that need to be corrected”, “We did not have the highest implementation, this is a key moment”, “We must adhere to our hockey, which we can squeeze out of our guys”, “It is important for me to fit our concept.” And along with “the guys worked, plowed, won not at an excellent, but at a good level,” like Pearl: “The guys disappointed us all, but the sport is so arranged. We will strive to be better. ”

It turns out that the players disappointed the coaching staff, which seems to have nothing to do with it. Not Pioneering, Igor Nikolaevich. In those days that you did not like much, but the hockey in which the people really liked, for the much less disappointment of loser coaches were driven by a filthy broom. By the way, if you begin to analyze the concept of “Soviet hockey” in detail, then not everything in it will be as blessed as they are trying to imagine it now. Because there was an exhibition version in the person of CSKA and the national team, and there were all the rest - with very small and temporary exceptions. And the principle of “all in the attack” for resistance to the same CSKA was murderous, which he perfectly understood such a subtle tactician as Nikolai Semenovich Epstein with his “chemist”.

And in general, there cannot be forever victorious dogmas, no matter how good they may seem. In all this bacchanalia, with the return of “attacking and combination” hockey (AKM), one sound thing from the past is forgotten-the accessibility of hockey for low-income families. And teaching smart hockey is undoubtedly necessary with the help of modern techniques, but preferably without rhetoric. Believe me, not a single children's coach, even the most detachable, says to his guys: “We will play hockey stupid and primitive!” Everyone wants to have smart Larion, bold cool and skillful pasta at hand. But such once every twenty years they are born and are connected in the same link every half a century. By the way, about the "Larion". As the recently famous referee and manager Leonid Weissfeld said: “When there are such masters, you can play in any style, and still win. But in modern hockey, no one and cannot have such total superiority. And how do we ensure such superiority in the class now? Due to what? Why did we suddenly decide that we would play just this style? "

Why they decided, I tried to explain. Adherents and grief propagandists are not sorry. Sorry for the guys, and all our hockey to the heap - too.