And the ice will not crack?

Businessman Roman Rotenberg appointed himself the head coach of St. Petersburg SKA. And why not immediately the national team ...

There are things that cannot be analyzed, for they are absurd on their own. This is now more and more in any areas of activity, and hockey as a game of state significance and look for a long time in the leaders. The absurdity begins unnoticed, gradually, in order to find power after some time and walk with a solemn march under the drum fraction and fanfare.

Of course, Roman Borisovich Rotenberg enters a new position for himself not under the thunder of applause. This is a star hockey servants, commenting on the purpose and explaining its meaning, with severe directness, a manly look in your eyes, says: “It's time!”

A long way was to go on domestic hockey to meet his 75th anniversary in a friendly choir, the list of which is too ashamed. The people are no simpler epithets does not spare.

The 40-year-old Roman Rotenberg has long wanted to do something epoch-making. He already had everything, I’m not even talking about money and business debts, secured by a powerful clan, I'm talking about the unfortunate hockey, which Roman Borisovich came to bless ten years ago. The career began with SKA, and after five years, the smart and restless functionary de facto steamed all Russian, and not only Russian, hockey for years. It was from his presentation and with his activity that the Red Machine brand has gained a new life. It was he who went out on the ice with the players of the Russian national team as a sparring partner. It was he who threatened from St. Petersburg not only the Swede, but the whole hockey world with total dominance. It was he who made SKA with the base club of the national team with all the ensuing. He came up with and brought into life the idea of ​​combining the posts of the head coach of SKA and the national team, while changing the last Olympic cycle of four mentors, including the freshly baked Olympic champion 2018 Oleg Znar. It was he who came up with the position of “head of the headquarters of the Russian national teams”, dear to the first vice-president of the Russian hockey federation with de facto powers of the main person in Russian hockey.

But all this was not enough. He wanted recognition not only at the headquarters level, but at the level of direct game management. Coaching laurels did not give Roman Borisovich peace for a long time, and he was not enough for him. He graduated from the Higher School of Coaches in Omsk, and last season he even replaced his last long -legged protege on the coaching bridge of SKA, wise experience with youth Valery Bragin. It seemed to many to be eccentricity, but Rotenberg Jr. thought strategically.

With insight, it turned out worse. When in the fall of last year the experiments of an indefatigable vice president finally found the features of a real failure, the power from the “St. Petersburg” intercepted the “Moscow”. Roman Rotenberg did not lose a single high position, but he was unobtrusively moved from the steering wheel, including from the Olympic team. It was then that previous developments came in handy: while remaining in SKA, he obviously decided that it would be best to remind of his outstanding role from the coaching bridge. Valery Bragin has long been a “lame duck”, following the removal from the national team, the resignation from the post of head coach SKA had to inevitably follow, and then, finally, this moment came.

SKA mentors in the continental hockey league change on average in the season. Roman Rotenberg will be 13th.

The history of world hockey still did not know the case that the top club led the oligarch and the functionary in one person whose immediate hockey experience would be limited to children and youthful ideas.

This is not at all consistent with his theses about following the great traditions of domestic hockey, but not the gods command the game. The senior coach Rotenberg Jr. left Valery Bragin with him, whatever those who fall into the SKA system should always be prepared. The reasoning about whether or not the new heir Tarasov, Chernyshev, Epstein, Tikhonov, Puchkov and other pillars of the coaching workshop will be able to cope with the team, half of which are made up of young talented guys collected from all over the country. Something will turn out, and from dismissal, Roman Borisovich Rotenberg is securely insured by his status. Here he is definitely a pioneer - who will remove him if he hired himself? Formally, of course, not quite himself, but in fact it is he.

For one of his failures of responsibility, Roman Rotenberg, of course, was not carried. He will not suffer this time either. SKA is strong enough not to fall in the near future, and the possible Beijing failure of the national team can bring a young specialist to the next top - the post of head coach of the national team.

I will not be surprised at one or another. The question "Where are you racing, Russian hockey?" Let's leave unanswered. Let Roman Borisovich answer.