Bizarre in Russia! SKA St. Petersburg will be led by the son of Putin’s friend who compares himself to Mourinho

SKA St. Petersburg, playing in the KHL in Russia, has a new coach, Roman Rotenberg. He is the son of Russian oligarch Boris Rotenberg, who is close to Vladimir Putin. The new St. Petersburg coach compares himself to Mourinho, although he can’t pronounce his name.

Roman Rotenberg never played hockey. He has moved around the Russian hockey scene, holding positions in the KHL federation, the Russian national team and SKA St. Petersburg. Now he has gotten his coaching license and appointed himself as head coach of St. Petersburg.

“This can only happen in Russia,” reacted former NHL forward and world champion Andrei Nikolishin when he found out who became the new head coach of St. Petersburg.

Rotenberg doesn’t want professionals standing around him. He wants to run everything himself because he doesn’t trust anyone else in hockey. Why is he the right choice to lead the team even though he has never played professionally?

José Marino started out as a translator for Alex Ferguson. He absorbed all his techniques and became a very successful coach. There are examples of this in football, basketball and other sports, there are many similar coaches in history.”

Rotenberg, however, got confused during the interview. José Marino was supposed to be José Mourinho. But he was not an assistant to Furguson, but started out in Portugal. No coach without experience has ever stepped into a big team as a head coach.

It went on to say that even though he had never played hockey before, he understood it perfectly. In fact, he watches a lot of games and keeps count of them all. He said he’s seen more than 800 of them. Everyone needs to understand that he lives and loves hockey. His goal is to win the Gagarin Cup.

He has already played two games as head coach. He won 5-1 against Kunlun and beat Novgorod 3-0. However, both teams are not among the strongest opponents in Russia.

He appointed himself as head coach of SKA St. Petersburg. All the positions he held in hockey were obtained thanks to his father. It remains to be seen how long Boris Rotenberg, who is a close friend of President Putin, will have patience with him.

There have been ten coaches at SKA in the last nine years. One of them was Czech coach Milos Riha. St. Petersburg has won the Gagarin Cup twice in its history, last enjoying the win in 2017.

Source:: iSport