Serhiy Rebrov Apologizes for Padel Video with Vasily Berezutsky

Serhiy Rebrov has issued a public apology after a video of him playing padel with former Russia international Vasily Berezutsky triggered a backlash in Ukraine.

The clip, filmed in Marbella, Spain, showed the pair as doubles partners and quickly spread across Ukrainian social media in recent days. The exact date of the recording remains unknown, but the reaction was immediate and fierce, with many fans accusing the former Ukraine head coach of crossing a moral line during wartime.

Under pressure, Rebrov took to Instagram to explain and to say sorry.

He stressed that he knew of Berezutsky’s antiwar position but did not realize the former CSKA Moscow defender had recently returned to Russia to work as a coach.

“I knew about Berezutsky’s antiwar stance, but I wasn’t aware that he had recently gone to Russia to work as a coach — I don’t follow football in the terrorist state,” Rebrov wrote. “As a public figure, I want to apologize to the Ukrainians I offended by doing this, but I ask that no one doubt my pro-Ukrainian stance.”

The episode lands at a delicate moment for Rebrov’s public image. He took charge of Ukraine’s national team in 2023, tasked with steering the side through a turbulent era on and off the pitch. His tenure ended in the spring of 2026 after Ukraine failed to qualify for the World Cup, a sporting disappointment layered on top of a country already living through crisis. He now serves as a vice president of the Ukrainian Association of Football, a role that keeps him firmly in the spotlight.

That visibility is precisely why a seemingly casual game of padel turned into a political flashpoint.

Berezutsky, for his part, is no anonymous opponent. A cornerstone of CSKA Moscow and the Russian national team in the 2010s, he was among the very few Russian athletes to publicly denounce the invasion at its outset. On February 24, 2022, he posted the message “No to war” on social media while working on the CSKA coaching staff under his brother, Alexei.

His career then drifted away from Russia, at least for a time. After CSKA dismissed Alexei Berezutsky as head coach in the summer of 2022, Vasily moved to Spain, stepping out of the immediate glare of Russian football. The return came in December 2025, when he accepted the head coach position at Ural, a Russian club chasing promotion from the First League to the Russian Premier League.

That pursuit fell short. Ural failed to go up, and Berezutsky left at the end of the season.

Those career moves, though, have now become part of a much larger argument about where the line sits for Ukrainian public figures when it comes to any contact with Russian football. Rebrov insists his stance has not changed. The reaction at home suggests that, for many, the margin for error has vanished.