SKA removed Rotenberg from the board of directors following a disappointing season
SKA hockey club has suspended the son of Putin’s friend Roman Rotenberg from the board of directors due to unsatisfactory performance. At the same time, he remained in the position of head coach.
The club’s full board of directors and operational management resigned after a failed season in the KHL, SKA said in a statement.
This decision was made “in view of the failure to achieve the goals set for the main team at the end of the last two seasons and the departure in the second and first rounds of the playoffs”. At the same time, the message does not mention the dismissal of Rotenberg from the post of head coach of the club.
Rotenberg Jr.’s career is linked to Gazprom, which is owned by his father and uncle, Boris and Arkady Rotenberg. He has held positions as advisor to the chairman of the board of Gazprombank, external communications consultant for Gazprom Export, first vice president of the Russian Ice Hockey Federation and head coach of the SKA St. Petersburg ice hockey club.
Rotenberg is known for his scandalous statements. For example, in June 2024, the son of Putin’s friend said that he was fighting against “blatant children” in sports.
As the BBC notes, Rotenberg, who had never played hockey professionally, by 2015 “essentially headed the Russian Ice Hockey Federation,” while the formal head of the organization, Vladislav Tretiak, became the nominal head. A little later, Roman Rotenberg became the chief of staff of the Russian national teams, having invented this position specifically for himself.
In this post, Rotenberg began to actively interfere in the coaching processes. During the World Championship in 2019, “the coaching staff, received dozens of calls a day from Roman Rotenberg with instructions on which of the hockey players and on which position to put, often the instructions were mutually exclusive”, recalls the interlocutor of the publication. As a result, the Russian national team lost to Finland in the quarterfinals.