Football conflicts

In August, the owner of "Spartak" Leonid Fedun announced his desire to withdraw his team from the RPL draw.

The reason was the refereeing errors in the match of the first round of the new season of the Russian championship with Sochi (2: 2).

As a result, the referee serving the game, Vasily Kazartsev, as well as his assistant at VAR, Alexei Eskov, had to pass a polygraph test.

Later, the RFU dismissed Kazartsev "for an indefinite period."

However, after just over two months, he returned to work in the RPL.

Fedun, on the other hand, abandoned his original idea.

Another Moscow team, Lokomotiv, was rocked by scandals throughout most of the year.

It all started with the decision of the club's management in May not to renew the expiring contract with head coach Yuri Semin.

His place was taken by Marko Nikolic.

The fans took the castling extremely negatively and openly declared war on the general director of the club, Vasily Kiknadze.

In August, the traditional meeting with the fans ended in open conflict.

The latter called on the functionary to leave Lokomotiv, and in response he accused them of "leaving the team without support."

At the end of December, Kiknadze, together with the chairman of the board of directors of the club, Anatoly Meshcheryakov, nevertheless left their posts.

  • meeting with Lokomotiv fans

  • © FC Lokomotiv Moscow / YouTube

If Semin left against his own will, then CSKA head coach Viktor Goncharenko was ready to resign voluntarily.

After the crushing defeat from Zenit (0: 4), the Belarusian left in an unknown direction "due to poor health."

Later it became known that the specialist was at home.

In the absence of Goncharenko, the army team, under the leadership of Sergei Ovchinnikov, who was in charge of him, drew with Dynamo - 0: 0.

However, on the eve of the derby with Spartak, the Belarusian returned to the team, and the army team won four victories in the remaining six matches and almost made it to the Champions League.

Even stranger was the departure of Sergey Yuran from Khimki.

The coach brought the Moscow Region team to the Russian Cup final and prepared it for performance in the Premier League.

However, just a week before the start of the new season, the specialist announced his resignation.

According to Juran, the decision was made because his candidacy was allegedly not approved by the new general director of Spartak Shamil Gazizov.

Also, the coach said that, according to rumors, Khimki and Ufa "will fit" under the red and white.

  • Sergey Juran

  • RIA News

Finally, the year ended with a major scandal involving the coach of the Russian national team Stanislav Cherchesov.

After the devastating defeat by Serbia in the League of Nations, the coach made a lot of loud statements in an interview with Match TV.

In particular, he criticized the young footballers of the national team, including Fyodor Chalov.

CSKA stood up for its own footballer, in particular, stating the following: “Many, for example, consider him a physical instructor, not a coach.

We can agree or disagree with this, but we will never allow ourselves to declare this either on television or in the print media. "

Fights in front of everyone

However, not all conflicts were limited only to verbal skirmishes.

So, in August, the former captain of the Russian national football team, Roman Shirokov, beat a judge.

The incident occurred during a match of amateur teams in Moscow.

Dissatisfied with the decision of referee Nikita Danchenkov, the former Zenit player struck him with a fist in the face, and later finished off the lying referee with his foot.

In December, the court ruled on the case.

Shirokov was sentenced to 100 hours of community service and fined 100 thousand rubles.

And in mid-November, there was a conflict between two famous MMA fighters, Adam Yandiev and Sergey Kharitonov.

A fight between them took place in the foyer of the Luzhniki Sports Palace during one of the mixed martial arts tournaments.

As a result, Kharitonov received a concussion, a fractured nose and severe eye damage.

The day after the attack, the athlete wrote a statement to the police. 

The conflict ended with an unexpected reconciliation of the parties.

The men apologized to each other.

In turn, Yandiev agreed to compensate Kharitonov for the damage. 

  • Adam Yandiev and Sergey Kharitonov

  • Instagram

The scandal was far from the first in the world of Russian mixed martial arts.

At the end of April, MMA fighter Dmitry Kuznetsov posted on Youtube an offensive video about UFC champion Khabib Nurmagomedov.

In it, he accused the native of Dagestan of hypocrisy and cowardice.

And just a few days after the video appeared on the network, the athlete wrote about the attack on him by a group of unknown persons.

Despite this, Dmitry refused to write a statement to the police.    

And at the end of the year, another fight took place with the participation of Russian fighters.

Magomed Ismailov and Vladimir Mineev met in hand-to-hand combat right after one of the fights at the AMC Fight Nights tournament in Moscow.

In addition to them, outsiders immediately burst into the octagon and began to beat Mineev.

Fortunately, the athletes were not seriously injured.

Later, both were fined 10 thousand rubles.  

Verbal skirmishes

Figure skating has become one of the leaders in terms of the number of conflict situations.

Back in 2019, a real war of words began between the coaching groups of Eteri Tutberidze and Evgeny Plushenko.

In 2020, the confrontation continued, because two bright skaters left Tutberidze for Plushenko at once: Alexandra Trusova and Alena Kostornaya.

The peculiar “transfers” of the athletes were accompanied by not always correct comments from the representatives of both headquarters.

So, the choreographer Alexei Zheleznyakov, who works with figure skaters from the Tutberidze group, called Trusova's act a betrayal.

In response, Plushenko called on his colleagues to "calm down the funny employee." 

And in September, competing specialists clashed again.

On the Instagram page of the Tutberidze group, the correspondence between the Olympic champion Alina Zagitova and Plushenko's wife Yana Rudkovskaya was published.

In it, a well-known producer urged the Olympic champion to join the group with her husband.

  • Coach Dmitry Mikhailov, figure skater Alexandra Trusova and coach Evgeni Plushenko at the 5th stage of the Grand Prix in Figure Skating in Moscow

  • RIA News

  • © Alexander Wilf

Another round of conflict in 2020 also occurred between the famous coach Tatyana Tarasova and the three-time Olympic champion Irina Rodnina.

The reason for the new quarrel was an interview with the honored trainer, in which she told how Rodnina allegedly sent the cancer patient of the Bolshoi Theater soloist and choreographer Elena Cherkasskaya to competitions in Australia.

In response, the three-time Olympic champion advised Tarasova to “hit history”.

And during the quarantine, the famous journalist Dmitry Guberniev managed to enter into a skirmish with two famous athletes Elena Vyalbe and Anfisa Reztsova at once.

The long-standing conflict with the president of the FLGR flared up with renewed vigor after the three-time Olympic champion was admitted that she did not want a commentator to work in her sport.

Guberniev called the interview to Vyalba "a meaningless stream of speech."

Reztsova was harshly criticized by the "voice of biathlon" after she admitted that she did not comply with the quarantine rules.

The journalist even suggested giving a different name to the stadium named after the four-time Olympic champion in Sochi.

Attacks on Russia

Unfortunately, the year was not without a doping scandal involving Russian biathletes.

Early in the morning on February 22, on the eve of the men's relay in the framework of the World Cup, Italian police rushed into the location of the national team in Antholz.

They searched the rooms of Alexander Loginov, Yevgeny Garanichev and coach Alexander Kasperovich.

Phones and laptops were confiscated from the athletes. 

As it turned out later, the cause of the incident was someone else's accreditation of Kasperovich.

It was reported that Loginov's personal mentor used the document of the Ukrainian national team to be able to be near the wards.

This aroused suspicion.

As a result, the coach and leader of the Russian national team decided to file a lawsuit against the IBU for organizing searches.

And the RBU demanded that the international union clarify the situation. 

In turn, the already mentioned Reztsova, on the eve of the World Cup, accused the seven-time World Cup winner Martin Fourcade, as well as the Norwegian biathletes, of receiving medical support. 

The Frenchman's reaction was extremely harsh.

He suggested that the four-time Olympic champion suffers from senile insanity and promised to discuss the possibility of filing a lawsuit against Reztsov.

The case did not come to court proceedings, and the famous biathlete and skier complained that Fourcade Jr. had her words translated incorrectly. 

Socially unacceptable behavior

With the development of social networks, famous people increasingly find themselves in unpleasant situations and unwittingly become heroes of scandals.

In particular, Russian Formula 1 pilot Nikita Mazepin seriously tarnished his reputation just a week after signing a contract with the Haas team.

The young man posted a video on Instagram in which he tries to molest his girlfriend.

Later, the video was deleted, but managed to spread over the network.

Many fans of the "royal races" reacted to him extremely negatively and even created a petition demanding to break the agreement with Mazepin. 

Artyom Dzyuba got into an even more unpleasant situation.

The publication of an intimate video featuring a football player had the effect of a bomb.

The very next day, the head coach of the Russian national team Stanislav Cherchesov recalled the striker from the national team for the upcoming matches, and Zenit's mentor Sergei Semak temporarily deprived the ward of the captain's band.

Nevertheless, after a while she returned to him. 

  • Artyom Dzyuba

  • © Maksim Konstantinov / Global Look Press

Scandals with the stars

However, not only Russian athletes were noted for indecent behavior in 2020.

So, the former UFC champion Conor McGregor got into another scandal in September.

The fighter was accused of showing his genitals to a woman during a vacation in Corsica.

The man was detained by the police for "indecent behavior".

In turn, the Irishman said that once again they tried to set him up. 

The two-time Olympic champion Petter Nortug faced much more serious problems.

The legendary Norwegian skier, who ended his sports career in 2018, was arrested at home for drunk driving and speeding.

In addition, during a search, the police found cocaine at his home.

The court did not pity the 34-year-old athlete and sentenced him to seven months in prison, and also revoked his driver's license for life.

  • Petter Nortug

  • globallookpress.com

  • © Keystone Press Agency

Many scandals, one way or another related to sports, happened in the UK.

For example, four-time Olympic champion Mo Farah was charged with an anti-doping rule violation in February.

It was revealed that a Somali-born British runner was taking intravenous L-carnitine, but did not report it.

And in September, the British Gymnastics Federation began investigating cases of violence over the past 12 years against local athletes.

All of them accused the head coach of the national team Amanda Reddin of cruel behavior.

In turn, the chairman of the Football Association of England Greg Clark was forced to resign because of a speech at a hearing in the parliamentary committee.

The functionary was accused of racism, homophobia and sexism at the same time.

In particular, he used the expression “colored footballers”.

The famous Canadian hockey player Brendan Lipsik got into a sexist scandal.

In May, he was put on a draft refusal draft by Washington for misogynistic comments in personal correspondence on social networks.

His friend's Instagram account was hacked, and the screenshots were made public.

And the head coach of the Wales national football team, the former Manchester United midfielder Ryan Giggs, was completely accused of assaulting his girlfriend and causing her bodily harm.

The 46-year-old man was forced to spend several hours at the police station, after which he was released on bail.