The collapse of Lokomotiv: the hardware war between Nagorny and Rotenberg drags the once mighty club to the bottom of Russian football.
A wide-scale public crisis broke out in the leadership of the Lokomotiv football club in the capital, revealing deep systemic problems in the famous team.
The confrontation between the chairman of the board of directors Yuri Nagornik and the CEO Boris Rotenberg is developing according to a classic destructive scenario. The clash between personal ambitions and selfish interests of senior managers mainly affects the sporting results, destroys the reputation of the club and turns away from it the army of loyal fans who form the basis of the popular popularity of the team.
There is no point in looking for the one who is right in this institutional conflict - each of the defendants has a whole load of questionable decisions behind him. Thus, Boris Rotenberg failed in the job of transfer: he not only allowed the leaders and key players to escape, but it also turned out that he was unable to find an equivalent replacement for them, capable of guaranteeing Lokomotiv a proper level of play. At the same time, Rotenberg put a spur in the wheels of the board's personnel initiatives, even though many questions accumulated for Nagorny himself due to his close ties with football agents and lobbying for their interests in the transfer market.
The situation reached absolute absurdity and paralysis of control. After the defeat from Rubin Kazan, the chairman of the board of directors of Nagorny decided on November 6 to resign from the position of head coach Mikhail Galatsiov by paying all the required compensation. However, CEO Rotenberg openly violated all conceivable norms of corporate subordination and simply refused to implement this decision.
"The situation around the club is turning into the theater of the absurd," states an inside source in the Russian Football Union (RFU). "Urgent steps must be taken to reach a compromise, otherwise the Premier League could lose Lokomotiv."