Veiterä (Lappeenranta, Finland) and Russian-born, Swedish-dwelling Valery Gratchev has written contract for coaching in Veiterä. Deal is for one year and it includes option for one year.
Veiterä has been developing its team and bandy culture last few years with great steps. Two Finnish championships, one silver and one Cup title in Finland and relatively good performances in World Cup has made Veiterä leading Bandy club in Finland. Three last year Veiterä’s coach was Aleksey Nikishov who is also known from Team Kazakhstan.
Valery Gratchev has remarkable career as a bandy-player from Russian Super-League (Zorkij and Dinamo Moskva) and from Swedish Elitserien (IFK Vänersborg) and Allsvenskan (Falu BS, Blåsut). Gratchev has Swedish nationality after playing and living in Sweden over 20 years.
Gratchev has altogether eight WCS-medals: four gold and four silver. He has been nominated three times best midfield player in WCS and also in Russian Super-League.
As a coach, Gratchev has been working nearly ten years. First in Zorkij Krasnogorsk and lately in Baikal-Energy from Irkutsk. With Baikal-Energy Gratchev has two silver medals from Super-League. In addition, Valery was coaching already as player-coach in Swedish teams. Nowadays he is finishing his degree in coaching in the University of Khabarovsk.
President of Bandy club Veiterä, Mr. Martti Tepponen is pleased for contract with Valery Grachev:
– We wanted continuing process after Nikishov’s period in Veiterä. He started that path which we want to go. We had few other options, but Gratchev is just the coach which we would like to have, says Tepponen.
Veiterä has clear aims and contract with Gratchev is one part of that process.
– Our goal is to play on international level, both in World Cup and back in Finland, in our own Bandy-League. We believe that it develops bandy in Finland.
– Valery has also good ideas to improve our young players and it gives bright perspective to Bandy in Veiterä and in Lappeenranta in the future.
Valery Gratchev (on left) and Veiterä’s Martti Tepponen, CEO of Disas Fish, has great motivation to develop Veiterä close to world-class bandy team.
(Source: www.veitera.fi)