Ex-player of the Russian national volleyball team Dmitry Fomin believes that the Cuban player Ailama Cese Montalvo, who left Uralochka-NTMK against the backdrop of a racist scandal, will be difficult to replace.

The head coach of Lokomotiv Kaliningrad Andrey Voronkov on May 12, in the fifth game of the final series of the Russian Championship against Uralochka, during one of the timeouts, talking to his players, asked: “Why are you catching this monkey?”, Alluding to Montalvo. On May 16, it became known that Montalvo was leaving Uralochka, for which she had played since 2019. The All-Russian Volleyball Federation announced that they would consider Voronkov’s statements at a meeting of the disciplinary commission on May 19.

As Mikhail Karpol, the coach of the club from the Sverdlovsk region, told Match TV, the decision of the 21-year-old Cuban has nothing to do with the scandal.

– She was a key player of Uralochka, scored 45-50 shots per game, so it will be difficult for the team to replace her. There are very few players on the market right now, they are in real trouble. Even with money, it is difficult to complete the team now. If you conditionally give any club any money with the condition to gather players and take first place in the championship, then no one will do it.

Could a racist scandal affect the attractiveness of the Russian league? No I do not think so. It seems to me that the coach did not want to offend anyone on purpose. If the decision of the Russian Volleyball Federation (VVR) is adequate, then everyone will have no questions on their own.

This cannot be left unnoticed, it will be interesting for me to watch how this is all resolved. I repeat, this is an unpleasant episode, but I don’t think that the coach of Lokomotiv wanted to somehow insult the Cuban volleyball player on purpose, ”Fomin told Gazeta.Ru.

Kaliningrad “Lokomotiv” became the champion of Russia, having won the final series with a score of 3-2.