Alexey Zhamnov added Spartak to himself – Sport – Kommersant

Hockey Spartak, which for many years has been unable to get rid of the status of an ordinary middle peasant in the KHL, and this season for the first time since 2017 did not make it to the playoffs, decided to entrust the post of head coach to Alexei Zhamnov. This is an interesting appointment. Mr. Zhamnov heads the Russian national team, which, however, remained without top tournaments due to international sanctions, but his experience as a club mentor is minimal.

Hockey “Spartak” announced on the appointment of Alexei Zhamnov as head coach. Commenting on it, the chairman of the club board of directors, Oleg Usachev, called the 52-year-old Zhamnov “an iconic figure for domestic sports”, who is faced with the task of leading the team to “high positions in the KHL, paying sufficient attention to the development of young players.”

The club is confident that, under the leadership of Alexei Zhamnov, Spartak will show “meaningful and interesting hockey, which, in turn, will impress many fans.”

Mr. Zhamnov himself said that he was attracted by the “vector and strategy of the club’s development for the coming seasons”, and he sees the advantage in the fact that the Spartak system “has a large number of young and promising hockey players, whose game and talent should become the key to new victories and success” Spartacus.”

Under the “old” victories, Alexei Zhamnov meant those that took place during the years of the existence of the USSR. In Soviet hockey, Spartak Moscow was indeed a prominent brand, winning the national championship four times. But he mined the last gold in 1976.

The current Spartak story is the story of an ordinary middle peasant who constantly announces serious ambitions, but never corresponds to them in reality.

After the creation of the KHL in 2008, the second round of the playoffs remained the ceiling of Spartak. He penetrated it only three times – in the first two seasons and last year, when circumstances helped the team. His rival at the starting stage, the Finnish Jokerit, left the KHL after the start of a special military operation in Ukraine. The current season turned out to be a failure for the club, even against the general gray background. For the first time since 2017, he did not make it to the playoffs, finishing ninth in the Western Conference and ahead of only very weak competitors – Kunlun and Sochi, and was fourth from the bottom in the league table. At the same time, during the regular season, Spartak was managed by three coaches – Boris Mironov, Igor Grishin and Alexei Zavarukhin, but none of them managed to put the team, if not bright, then at least a stable game.

Aleksey Zhamnov, of course, is much more famous than his unfortunate predecessors. Once a superstar of the NHL and the Russian national team, he is in 2021 headed national team of the country, preparing for last year’s Olympics in Beijing. It was held without the players of the North American League, and the Russians defending the champion title, showing not too creative, but tight hockey, made it to the final, in which they lost to the Finns.

It was not possible to find out whether Aleksey Zhamnov would make adjustments to the boring style of the national team and whether she was able to take medals with him in conditions of tougher competition than in Beijing, it was not possible. Shortly after the Olympics, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF), following the recommendations of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), published shortly after the start of events in Ukraine, suspended her from participating in major competitions.

The only tournament of the national team in 2022 was the December Cup of Channel One, in which its rivals were Belarusians and Kazakhstanis who were not part of the world elite. At the same time, even such a composition of the competition did not provide its owners with the first place. It got beating the Russians in shootouts of the Belarusian team.

Alexey Zhamnov is very closely connected with Spartak. He joined his leadership in 2015. Mr. Zhamnov has performed various functions at the club in the past eight years – vice president, general manager, head of the club academy, adviser to the chairman of the supervisory board. The problem is that he has very little coaching experience. In fact, with the exception of a few matches of the national team, he is limited to a short period in the position of acting coach of Spartak in the championship four years ago. True, just in that season, the capital’s team played hockey, which was more or less similar to hockey played by the grandee. He gave difficulties even to the giant SKA. In the first round of the play-offs, he faced stubborn resistance from an outsider and defeated him, having suffered two defeats, in six matches.

Alexey Dospekhov