| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Lev Ivanovich Yashin | ||
| Date of birth | 22 October 1929 | ||
| Place of birth | Soviet Union | ||
| Date of death | 20 March 1990 (aged 60) | ||
| Place of death | Soviet Union | ||
| Height | 1.89 m (6 ft 2 in) | ||
| Playing position | Goalkeeper | ||
A superb goalkeeper, perhaps the best in the history of the game, he was a Soviet sports hero. Yashin spent his playing career with the Moscow Dynamo club, and after retirement was a coach there. Dynamo won five league championships and three cups due in large part to Yashin’s domination of the goal. Yashin’s playing was an important element in the Soviet national team’s gold medal win at the 1956 Olympics, and he tended goal for the team in three World Cups. He became the only goalkeeper to be named European footballer of the year, and was awarded the title of world goalkeeper of the 20th cent. Fondly known as the black spider (after his Black Goal keeper uniform..
Playing career:
He spent his entire professional football career with Dynamo Moscow, from 1950 to 1970, winning the USSR football championship five times and the USSR Cup three times. Yashin’s club team-mate, rival and mentor was Alexei ‘Tiger’ Khomich, the keeper of the Soviet national team, who had become famous for his role in Dynamo Moscow’s British tour.
In 1954, Yashin was finally called up to the national team, and would go on to gather 78 caps. With the national team he won the 1956 Summer Olympics and the 1960 European Championship. He also played in three World Cups, in 1958, 1962 and 1966. The 1958 World Cup, played in Sweden, put Yashin on the map for his performances, with the Soviet Union advancing to the quarter-finals. In a group stage match against the eventual Cup winners Brazil, which the Soviet team lost 2:0, Yashin’s performance prevented the score from becoming a rout. He was selected into the All-Star Team that World Cup. In 1962, despite suffering two concussions during the tournament, he once-again led the team to a quarter-final finish, before losing to host country Chile.That tournament showed that Yashin was all too human, having made some uncharacteristic mistakes. In the game against Colombia, which the Soviet Union was leading 4:1, Yashin let in a few soft goals, including an Olympic goal scored by Marcos Coll directly from a corner kick (the first and the only Olympic goal scored in FIFA World Cup history). The game finished in a 4:4 tie, which led the French newspaper l'Equipe to predict the end of Yashin’s career. But he would bounce back to win the Ballon d'Or the following year and to lead the Soviet team to its best showing at the 1966 World Cup, a fourth place finish. Always ready to give advice to his comrades, Yashin even made a fourth trip to the World Cup finals in 1970 as the third-choice back-up and an assistant. The Soviet team again reached the quarter-finals. Yashin is credited with four clean sheets out of the 12 games he played in the World Cup finals.
Lev Yashin is the only goalkeeper ever to win the European Footballer of the Year Award (1963). He is also believed to have stopped around 150 penalty kicks during his career, far more than any other goalkeeper in history. When asked what his secret was, he would reply that the trick was "to have a smoke to calm your nerves, then toss back a strong drink to tone your muscles."
Lev Yashin died in 1990 of complications caused by an amputation of one of his legs following a knee injury in 1986.
Still, his reputation as a brilliant keeper, a true sportsman, and an innovator of the game lives on. Yashin would always organize the defensive game of his team, often so fiercely that even his wife accused him of yelling too much on the pitch. He rarely captained his teams, as the accepted custom of appointing a goalkeeper captain was virtually unheard-of in that era, but his leadership on the field was always evident. Yashin was one of the goalkeepers that began the practice of punching balls out in difficult situations instead of trying to catch them. Other novel practices he developed were the quick throw of the ball to begin a counterattack, coming out of the penalty area to anticipate danger, and the command and organization of the defenders—practices now quite common among goalkeepers. In 1994, FIFA established the Lev Yashin Award for the best goalkeeper at the World Cup finals. FIFA polls named Yashin as the sole goalkeeper in World Team of the 20th Century. World Soccer Magazine named him in their The 100 Greatest Players of the 20th Century. Many commentators still consider Yashin the best keeper in the history of football, which resulted in the fact he was chosen to be the goalkeeper in most of the world-all-time teams ever written (including the FIFA World Cup All-Time Team and the FIFA Dream Team)
