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Lev Yashin
1st USSR world cup team 1958. Yahsin is in the bottom row, third from the left.
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) as a goalkeeper. His factory team plays in the Moscow amative teams tournament in 1948. Yashin claimed that as a kid he wanted to be a forward, but since he was the tallest fellow around, and also because his name was Lyova (diminutive from Lev "the Lion"), the coach appointed him to be a goalie
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 f or "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.
1967: Yashin holds the USSR Cup trophy. That year "Dinamo" beat CSKA 3:0 in the final game at the Luzhniki stadium in Moscow.
Sharing experience with Rinat Dassaev - the world's best goalkeeper in 1988 (left) and Dmitry Kharin (right).
After the farewell game in 1971, Yashin is carried by team-mates Murtaz Khurtsilava (left) and Vladimir Pilgui (right).
