“The IIHF is run by very strange people. Just fools.” Candid interview with Kamil Hajiyev about hockey

Kamil Gadzhiev is the founder of the Fight Nights promotion, an international master of the sport and the winner of the Jiu-Jitsu World Cup. Today he is one of the most active and creative officials in Russian sport. And Kamil is a very frank interlocutor, who does not hesitate to make harsh and at the same time well-reasoned assessments.

In our hockey, Gadzhiev managed to work as one of the leaders of the Admiral. Therefore, the conversation began with the club from the Far East, whose game became a small sensation in the first half of the championship.

Give the admiral at least three billion, he will only fight for the playoffs”

— The Vladivostok club had a great start to the season, now it has lost ground a bit, the team has swelled. What to expect from her?

– “Admiral” is currently on the verge of solving its traditional task – to reach the playoffs. The club has historically always had one task – to participate in the Gagarin Cup. Some seasons it worked, some it didn’t. About 50 to 50 for all the years of the team’s existence. Now I don’t even know what has to happen for the Admiral not to make the playoffs. He will go out.

Probably, we will not talk about the second round of the Gagarin Cup, but today’s formation will be beaten in the playoffs. At the very least, he will drink an opponent’s blood. This is not the team that should cash in the series 0-4 now.

– In the Far East, we often hear slogans: “In five years, we must take the Gagarin cup”. This is the objective set in Khabarovsk. Is it necessary to justify the money for the maintenance of the club, which the region allocates? Or is there still a chance to become champion?

– No matter how much money you give Admiral or Amur, they will always fight only to reach the playoffs. Come on, kill him!

– Because good players won’t fly there?

“I don’t know what it’s related to. Probably, the people themselves are initially set up for this. No matter what the local authorities say, indoor hockey players are only solving this problem – reaching the playoffs. And when they come out, every player wants to rise higher, show good stats.

But overcoming the stereotype that these are teams that constantly hang between eighth and eleventh place is by no means impossible. Give at least three billion now to the Admiral, he will still fight for the playoffs. The fact that today the team is in sixth place for enough money, although it will soon end the regular season in seventh or eighth place, is normal.

“I want Ak Bars to panic and win the Cup”

– Do you have a prediction of who will win the Gagarin Cup?

— SKA, CSKA… Probably because I watch Western teams more often now. But I want Ak Bars to panic and win the Gagarin Cup.

– “Ak Bars” ate Znark? No matter how good a trainer you are, if you enter the wrong water you will be eaten by the local alligators.

– To be fair, Znark had plenty of time. I have my old observations in any sport. In hockey, a super talented coach has to take average players and turn them into a great team. Or, on the contrary, it is necessary to collect cool hockey players and give them the most ordinary coach. But when we round up super cool hockey players and put a super cool specialist on top of them, it rarely ends in anything decent.

Bykov and the Russian team in 2008 – yes. Znark had a very strong team at the Olympics, but they also played below capacity, according to many. Of course, it is strange to say such things about Olympic champions. But there was the first match lost against the Slovaks, and a difficult final with the Germans.

The idea is that everything should have a powerful figure leading the team who shows regular people how to do cool things. Or nice guys come to the team and one of the coaches just finds a common language with them. And while the coach himself is cool, he finds it difficult to work with famous players. In my opinion, something similar happened to Znark in Ak Bars.

“Rothenberg on the bench already gives more than a hundred points to SKA”

– Roman Rotenberg, who studied marketing in London, managed SKA and confidently goes to the KHL in first place. It’s incredible? It turns out that anyone can become a successful trainer?

“Here, first, the love of hockey, which you can’t take away from Roman,” Kamil begins bending his fingers. – Second, a cool set of hockey players. Third, cool assistants. He does not make the team alone. There are people who have been working in the system for many years, helping, suggesting. Even the players, realizing that their coach is still a very young specialist, come to his rescue somewhere.

And more luck! This cannot be taken away from Rotenberg either. Suffice it to recall the final of the Olympics in 2018. Fart is a very important thing in sport.

And the fact that a marketer… Yes, Roman is a walking marketer. He has followers, he has haters. But the fact that he is on the bench during the game already gives SKA plus a hundred points. The club immediately began to be discussed even more, it became even more interesting. For someone – even more hated, and someone in relation to the team warmed up.

– Did you see the chip? The KHL fines Rotenberg for an indecent gesture after an overtime goal of 300,000 rubles. And in response, he dabs Victory Fist T-shirts and wins a million.

– Everything comes from the love of hockey. But here, of course, the independence factor is still very important. Because it happens that the coach worries about everything. And for a fine, and for the fact that someone slapped him from above. Roman Borisovich need not worry about all this. He himself is at the head of this pyramid. Therefore, do everything as it feels. And he feels good.

“I’m afraid that Ovechkin is not allowed to pass Gretzky”

– When Ovechkin overtakes Gretzky, will it cause a sensation in North America? Russian at the top of the hockey pyramid…

– It is feared that in the next two years something will happen that will not allow Sasha to bypass Gretzky. But these can only be non-sport related factors.

If all goes well, he himself will already reach this record, everyone understands that. In three seasons, Ovechkin will knock out eighty goals for anyone. Now you are afraid of political cataclysms, when a person with a Russian surname and a Russian passport simply cannot live in the United States. But I hope it won’t come to that.

Will there be powerful opponents to this record in North America? Maybe they will. But they will certainly fall on those who are for this record. And there are many such people among Americans. The same people from Washington. They’re all for Ovechkin’s case, and it’s a pretty big lobby, considering the White House is located in the capital.

The crunch moment, when something could go wrong, was in the first quarter of last year. But he remained in the past. If they wanted to shake Ovechkin off the United States, they would have done it already. In this regard, it will not be worse, so Sanya will achieve the record.

Now they don’t give me a US visa. Even though it was 10 years ago. But when Ovechkin gets close to his record, I want to go to America for a month and go there to every Washington game, because I want to witness that record.

– A question for you, as a person who organizes leagues. Hockey has the NHL, where many famous Russian players play. And there is the IIHF, which rejected our team and does not let it go to the world championships, including the youth one. Why such a different approach?

– Because the NHL is run by the right people who are business oriented, not political. There, at the head of everything, there is the dollar, it is the king and the god. In modern professional sports, money rules – the ruble, the dollar. It is an objective view of things.

And the IIHF speaks in some outdated categories. Well, how is that possible? I believe that the World Cup without the Russian team is simply illegitimate. It’s real. Many IIHF tournaments, where the Russian team played, but NHL stars did not come, we, hockey fans, considered illegitimate. And then play without the Russian team! It’s just stupidity.

I feel like some very strange people are running the IIHF right now. Take it and say, “Russians should play hockey.” Because it is the second power after Canada, which claims this six-letter word – hockey. Just fools.

“Caprizov is understandable for Americans – cheerful, smiling, girls like it”

– Imagine that as general manager, you are offered to build a team in the NHL, choosing for this only star, a very famous player. Who would you build it around now?

– I would not take Ovechkin for this role, because he is already 37 years old and it would be a story for three years. Much has already been squeezed out of Sanya in terms of marketing. You cannot propose anything new. I would take Kaprizov. I think Cyril is a great story. Photogenic, curly. Media-wise, a little work with him would be great.

– In “Minnesota”, by the way, in this regard they are not finalizing.

For now, yes, but they will now. Here is his story.

– That is, it is possible to build a cannon team around Kaprizov?

– Yes. I think it will work. But, if you also pump it correctly, then 100%. He has everything. Here, even purely physiognomically, take the face of Cyril – it is understandable for Americans. Happy, always smiling, one hundred percent like the girls in the United States. You can make a very good story with Kaprizov.

– When Ovechkin leaves, Kaprizov and our other players will take his place. When Khabib left MMA, was there a replacement candidate? Or did the whole industry immediately sink?

– Not. In three to five years, Khabib’s place could be taken by Islam Makhachev. But he’s not as online as Khabib. It has many other things. He’s a great fighter, even more versatile than Khabib, but there’s something missing. It happens that a fighter loses, but everyone knows him anyway. A typical example is Conor McGregor. But such a famous fighter will certainly appear in Russia. You just have to wait a bit.