Businessman Alexander Shamsutdinov in the Tula region has reputation chief sports patron and patron of the regional hockey. In January of this year, he was appointed Advisor to the First Vice-President of the Russian Hockey Federation Roman Rotenberg.
Obviously, Shamsutdinov sees the new position only as another step in the hockey bureaucratic hierarchy. Rothenberg’s adviser’s crust opens before him are the prospects for participation in the ambitious hockey project of the federal level “Russia 25”, which is carried out within the framework of the state program “Development of physical culture and sports” (only in 2018-2020, more than 115 billion rubles were allocated from the federal budget for the development of hockey in the Russian Federation) . And besides this, the Night Hockey League, created on the initiative and direct participation of who knows.
Tula Governor Alexei Dyumin, sincerely rooting for sporting achievements and the authority of the region, provides comprehensive support to the Mikhailov Academy hockey club, sponsored by Shamsutdinov’s Poliplast JSC company. However, surrounded by the small-town Tula oligarch, they say that he has already complained more than once that the regional scale and the attention of the governor have become too small for him. It seems that Shamsutdinov has already mastered Tula as a financial and material base for his growing ambitions, having received the right to build a polymer production for the construction industry and funds for the development of the region’s sports infrastructure. The region spent more than 1.2 billion rubles in 2022 alone on training high-class athletes and elite sports and the same amount in the current year. However, the results of the hockey club sponsored by Shamsutdinov are not yet impressive. If you look at it, it’s like sponsorship is the other way around: it’s not he who supports the region, but the region of his business.
Against this background, the mess in the life of the Tula hockey club “Academy Mikhailov” looks quite logical. In the Tula media, criticism or at least an adequate assessment of Shamsutdinov’s activities is now taboo, but reality still breaks through in the form of revelations from former team players. For example, recently the former goalkeeper of AKM, Belarusian Dmitry Milchakov, was surprised at the kaleidoscopic speed of the change of command staff, the strange decisions of the coaching staff, etc.
There is nothing strange in this, since the functioning of the Mikhailov Academy is not built on sports principles, it is based on making money on kickbacks, cutting budget funds, leapfrog in personnel, using AKM as a social elevator for a single person from Tula, who is already practically overstepped the authority and reputation of the legendary Boris Mikhailov, the governor of Dyumin, and now he has approached the leadership of the FHR.
