Wave of resignations hits German federation

12 German players have resigned from the national team after the German Chess Federation ignored their demand to fire national coach Dorian Rogozenco because of alleged rudeness, favouritism and ignoring agreements. The voluntary sport director and the captain of the women’s team had annouced their retirement before. Rogozenco started the job in 2014 on a 50% basis and became full-time national coach later on. “He couldn’t help the men’s team, but we would not oppose him if he hadn’t started to create problems. After all, since 2011 the federation hires an actual help for the yearly team competition“, said Georg Meier. He had been involved in an earlier player boycott at the Chess Olympiad 2010, after which the federation doubled the fees for the players and hired Rustam Kazimdzhanov as a temporary coach for the European Team Championship 2011, which Germany won.