SKA Head Coach Romain Rotenberg answered the question of whether the KHL should switch to Cyrillic when writing last names on players’ sweaters.
In August, the All-Russian Hockey League (VHL) decided to write the names of athletes in Russian on sweaters.
— The VHL switched to Cyrillic on hockey jerseys. Is it necessary to write surnames in English in the KHL?
— Now Evgeniy Kuznetsov plays for SKA, and our task is for the whole world to see him in the KHL. That’s the point. For example, there is a huge market in India. But Indians don’t read Cyrillic. There is a huge market in China, but the Chinese don’t read Cyrillic. How will they understand who Kuznetsov is on the ice? Let’s think about the audience.
We are not talking about the North American market, let’s put that aside for political reasons. We will remove all the Finns and Swedes. But there are wonderful BRICS countries. They don’t read Cyrillic there either.
So it is important to understand the economic magnitude of the proposed reform. There must be serious specialists who will understand the effect. We want our hockey to be watched all over the world. Here is the answer to your question.
— In other words, you are not only fighting for the Gagarin Cup, but you are also making a television product.
– That’s it. We have to look at business, at commerce. Think about how to popularize your sport. How to develop kids to play hockey. We’re moving toward that step by step, achieving success. When we created the Red Machine program, it was just a theory.
Many people asked: “What kind of program is this?” But during the presentation of Evgeny Kuznetsov at the master class, everyone clearly saw what the “Red Machine” is. Even our legendary coach Vladimir Yurzinov told me how inspired he was. It was very difficult to conduct such a master class, to organize the children so that everyone worked synchronously. And people stood in the stands for two whole hours, enjoying the show.
“It is very important to have uniform standards in training hockey players, in promoting our sport and in ensuring that Evgeniy Kuznetsov is recognized even in China and India,” Rotenberg told .
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I’m Emma Smith, a dedicated journalist and avid storyteller. I have been writing for news websites for the past 5 years, reporting on hockey news and delivering in-depth analysis of the sport. In my current role as Author at Athletistic, I write about hockey events from around the world to keep followers up-to-date with what’s happening in the sport.
