Date of birth: 22 October 1929 (died: 20 March 1990)
Lev Yashin, famous for always wearing all-black when playing,
is arguably the greatest goalkeeper the world has ever seen. He played
22 seasons for Dinamo Moscow, the only club he ever represented, winning
five league championships and three cup championships.
Lev Yashin made an unprecedented contribution to the game, setting the
modern standards for goalkeeping. Being a great athlete in addition to
all his courage, he was among the first goalkeepers to command the entire
penalty area and did it with unmatched confidence and reliability.
He was equally impressive on the goalline with stunning
reflexes and plasticity which made him nearly flawless. Most notably,
he confronted the common attitude of catching the ball, inventing various
ways of simply kicking it away from the penalty area when required.
Yashin was the first choice goalkeeper for the Soviet Union from 1954
to 1967. In that spell he won 78 caps and played in three World Cups 1958,
1962 and finally 1966, where the Soviet Union reached the semifinal much
thanks to Yashin’s contribution. In 1956 he was a member of the Soviet
Union’s team who won the olympics in Melbourne, and four years later
he won the European championships.
One of the proudest moments in his career was when he won the “European
Player of the Year” award in 1963. He still remains the only goalkeeper
to have won that prize. He retired 41 years old playing against a team
of European stars in 1971 having kept 270 clean sheets and he is also
rumoured to have saved over 150 penalties in his long career.
Lev Yashin (also spelled "Yachine") is the most famous goalkeeper
of all times all around the world, the true legend of football. He made
an unprecedent contribution to the game, setting the modern standards
and still being unreachable in his unique talent. He was among the first
goalkeepers to play outside the goalkeeper's and even the penalty area,
doing it with unmatched confidence and reliability. Playing inside the
goal, he was perfectly capable of covering every corner of it, having
a stunning reaction and plasticity. And most notably, he confronted the
then common attitude of catching the ball, inventing various ways of simply
kicking it away of the penalty area.
Lev Ivanovich Yashin played for the Moscow Dinamo (1948 - 1970)
and USSR National teams (1954 - 1967). He was born on October
22, 1929, in Moscow, in the family of industry workers. In 1942 he started
to work himself as a turner at the "Krasnyi bogatyr" tools factory
in Moscow. His first coach was I.Shubin from the factory's children football
team, where he started playing in 1944. In 1949 a football and ice-hockey
coach A.I.Chernyshov invited him to the Moscow Dinamo club, were Yashin
played 22 seasons.
Yashin holds Dinamo's record of the games played in USSR championships
- 326. Together with the team, he won the champions title in 1954, 1955,
1957, 1959 and 1963, silver medals in 1956, 1958, 1962, 1967 and 1970,
bronze - in 1960. He was the USSR Cup winner in 1953, 1967 and 1970. In
1960, 1963 and 1966 he was awarded the prestigious "Ogonyok"
magazine prize for the best goalkeeper of the USSR. Yashin was listed
among 33 best players of the season 17 times, of which 14 times he was
the Number One choice.
With the USSR National team Yashin played 78 games (70 goals conceded).
He was the champion of Olympic Games in Melbourne in 1958, European Cup
winner in 1960 and runner-up in 1964, participated three World Championships
- 1958 in Sweden, 1962 in Chile and 1966 in England, where USSR took 4th
place.
In 1963 Lev Yashin was named the best European player by the "France
Football" weekly. He is the only goalkeeper awarded with this "Golden
Ball" award. In total, he kept his goal untouched in 270 games. In
1988, he was awarded the gold medal of the Olympic Order.
In 1971 in Moscow the last game of Lev Yashin took place: Moscow Dinamo
played against European stars team. In 1986 the knee injury led to the
amputation of the leg. Lev Yashin died on March 20, 1990 after the surgery
complications.
The first known photo of Lev Yashin (second from
the left).
Fisrt time Lev Yashin appeared in the start line-up
of Moscow "Dinamo" on July 6, 1950. Yashin spent his entire
career with "Dinamo", - such a faithfulness partially
can be explained by the fact that transfers between the top clubs
were greatly discouraged. Especially it was true for clubs like
"Dinamo", which belonged to the Interior Ministry: Lev
Ivanovich was formally a police officer.
During Yashin's era, games between the arch-rivalsof
Russian football, Moscow clubs "Spartak" and "Dinamo",
always were sold out. "Spartak" was generally more successful:
in 1949-1970 they won 6 Championship titles against "Dinamo"'s
5, and 4 USSR Cups against 3 for "Dinamo".
Moscow "Dinamo" traditionally had strong
goalkeepers - Yashin replaced in "Dinamo"'s goal the famous
Aleksei "the Tiger" Khomich, earning a handful of nicknames
of his own. "The Lion" was the meaning of his given name
for Russians, and for others he was known as "the Black Spider".
Yashin always was managing the defensive game
of his team, so fierce that even his wife accused him of yelling
too much at the pitch; however he hardly ever captained teams -
to appoint a goalkeeper as a captain is a relatively new custom.
The great athlete, possessing an extraordinary reactions and courage,
Yashin is said to save more than 150 penalties during his career.
With him in between the posts, the USSR National team achieved the
best results in their history, winning the Olympic Games in 1958,
the European Cup in 1960 and taking the 4th place in the World cup
in 1966.
Although dubbed "the greatest goalkeeper",
Yashin was not flawless, and actually conceded more goals per game
than any national team level goalkeeper nowadays. The World Cup
in 1962 in Chile was particularly embarrassing for the Soviet team:
quite surprisingly, Yashin let in a number of easy goals and USSR
did not advance further than the second round. However, one must
keep in mind that those days the defence was not the strongest line,
while it was not unusual for teams to play with 3 forwards.
Legends of Russian football: Eduard Streltsov,
Lev Yashin and Igor Netto (left to right) line up for a qualification
game for WC-1958. Streltsov did not play in Sweden because he was
sentenced for seven years of labor camps for an alleged sexual assault;
and Netto played only one game in the final stage of WC-1958 because
of the severe knee injury.
1st USSR world cup team 1958. Yahsin is in the
bottom row, third from the left.
1967: Yashin holds the USSR Cup trophy.
After the farewell game in 1971, Yashin is carried
by team-mates Murtaz Khurtsilava (left) and Vladimir Pilgui (right).
Sharing experience with Rinat Dassaev - the world's
best goalkeeper in 1988 (left) and Dmitry Kharin (right).