Background
Andrey Vatutin was born on July 25, 1973 in Moscow.
Andrey Vatutin was born on July 25, 1973 in Moscow.
Andrey spent all his childhood in Moscow, studied at school 1218 with in-depth study of French. After school, in 1990, entered the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University.
In 1995, after graduation, Andrey Vatutin began to work as a sports observer for the Russian News Agency TASS, and in 1996, for the first time, he focused on basketball, taking up the position as press officer of the RBF (Russian Basketball Federation).
The decision to join «Ural-Great» in 2000 for the position of assistant to CEO Sergey Kushchenko looked unexpected, but at the same time placed the young manager before serious challenges.
After the managerial victories came sports achievements - in 2001 and 2002, "Ural Great" succeeded in something that no one did before or after - it overthrew CSKA from the gold podium. At the same time, the collaboration of Kuschenko and Vatutin was also managing the affairs of the Russia men's national team for these two years.
Since the season-2006/07, Andrey Vatutin has been already much more involved in direct management of the club, engaged in a variety of organizational and sports issues, already in the position of vice-president. It was Andrey Vatutin who was at the head of the project of the EuroLeague match with the Spanish «TAU Cerámica» in the arena "Megasport", which assembled a record-breaking for Russian basketball audience of 14,000 people. It was he who arranged about holding the first major trade in the history of the country, as a result of which experienced forward Oscar Torres moved to CSKA from Khimki, and Nikita Shabalkin and Alexey Shved went in the opposite direction (on a leasehold basis).
In 2007, when Sergey Kushchenko moved to the post of president of the "big" CSKA, the owners of the club entrusted Andrey Vatutin with management of the army basketball, appointing him as CEO of PBC CSKA.
In February 2008, he and his team managed to organize another unique deal: they bought out the rights to Viktor Khryapa from the NBA club "Chicago Bulls".
The debut season for Andrey Vatutin as CEO of CSKA turned out to be ideal - the team confidently won the EuroLeague "Final Four". In season-2008/09, CSKA for the fourth time in a row played in the EuroLeague final, but could not take the title. Just before the beginning of the season-2011/12, the lockout in the NBA allowed he to return to his ranks for a year the best Russian basketball player of all time Andrey Kirilenko. In the summer of 2012, the PBC CSKA board approved Vatutin's offer to return Ettore Messina, the most successful coach in the club's modern history, to the position of head coach. In the winter of 2014, Messina informed Andrey Vatutin about his desire to leave the team.
A separate line in the biography of Vatutin was the work for the benefit of the development of Russian basketball. In the summer of 2010, a scandal broke out over judging matches of the playoff series between Dynamo Moscow and Lokomotiv-Kuban. As a result, clubs stopped being under the wing of the RBF and the Professional Basketball League was created. It was the first independent official tournament in team sports, and primarily the qualified and experienced management of CSKA was responsible for its organization. Vatutin became the head of the league. The PBL managed to attract a title sponsor and held two spectacular seasons, which the fans have remembered for a long time. One more merit of Vatutin was the entry of the PBL into the ULEB - the Union of European Leagues of Basketball.
In 2012, the PBL actually entered the structure of the VTB United League and gave to it many important best practices. Vatutin, who was vice-president of the United League since its foundation, left this position in August 2014.
In 2016, largely due to the efforts of the president and CEO of PBC CSKA Andrey Vatutin , the army team won the title of the EuroLeague Champions for the third time, beating Turkish Fenerbahce in overtime with a score of 101-96.
During the time of Andrey Vatutin 's work in the executive positions of PBC CSKA, the team became the champion of Russia, won three titles of the EuroLeague champion (2006, 2008, 2016), won the VTB United League four times (2010, 12, 13, 14), won the Cup of Russia four times (2005, 06, 07, 10). CSKA has won over the NBA clubs three times, and remain the only team that managed to beat Americans in the territory of the USA, and it has done it twice (2010 - Cleveland, 2013 - Minneapolis).
In his free time Andrey Vatutin prefers doing sports (swimming and athleticism) and travelling, he is a connoisseur of the theater, a gourmet. He reads a lot and likes to quote his favorite authors.
The head of the sports department of the newspaper "Trud" one of the most popular and oldest publications in the country.
Irina Vasilievna is a pedagogue. She worked as a teacher and director of studies at the Moscow school 1218, now retired.
