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Oleh Volodymyrovych Blokhin (born 5 November 1952 in Kiev) is a Ukrainian football coach of mixed Ukrainian (by mother) and Russian (by father) ethnicity[1] who was formerly a striker for the Soviet national team. He was named European Footballer of the Year in 1975.
[edit] Career
Blokhin was born in Kiev, the capital of the Ukrainian SSR, in 1955 to a mother of Ukrainian ethnicity and a father of Russian ethnicity. Blokhin's father was a native of Moscow.[1]
[edit] Playing
Blokhin played during most of his career for Dynamo Kyiv, becoming the USSR national championship's all-time leader and goalscorer with 211 goals, as well as making more appearances than any other player with 432 appearances. He won the championship 8 times. He led Dynamo to the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1975 and 1986, scoring a goal in each final. Blokhin is also the USSR national football team's most capped player with 112 caps, as well as their all time leading goalscorer with 42 goals; he played in the 1982 and 1986 Football World Cups where he scored 1 goal in each. He was one of the first Soviet players to play abroad, signing for Austria's Vorwärts Steyr in 1988, he also played in Cyprus with Aris.
[edit] Coaching
After retiring as a player, Blokhin coached Greek clubs Olympiacos (Under him they won the Greek Cup twice, in 1990 and 1992, and the Greek Super Cup once, in 1992), AEK Athens, PAOK, and Ionikos.
He has been serving as the head coach of the Ukrainian national team since September 2003. Under his leadership, Ukraine reached the quarter-finals of 2006 World Cup. There, Ukraine lost to Italy, the 2006 World Champion. Following the side's failure to reach UEFA Euro 2008, Blokhin stepped down as coach on 6 December 2007. [2]
On 14 December 2007, he was named head coach of FC Moscow. [3] The club finished 9th (from 16) and after the season ended Blokhin was fired from the club.[4] At the end of the season, Blokhin announced that if he knew how things would go in FC Moscow, he would have never signed there. This was because the club released many important players without Blokhin's permission yet still had many high expectations. [5]. Others said that the reason Blokhin failed in FC Moscow was that he and the press didn't have a friendly relationship, and because of that the press was constantly attacking Blokhin and that hurt his status among the players[6].
[edit] Politics
In 2002, Oleg Blokhin was elected to Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine's parliament) for a second term. In October 2002, he joined the United Social Democratic Party of Ukraine. Recently, Oleg has showed no political activity, concentrating on his coaching job.
[edit] Family
Blokhin was married to Irina Deriugina, the prominent Soviet/Ukrainian gymnast and world champion in free-stand exercise, but the couple divorced in early 1990s. They have a daughter named Irina.
[edit] 2006 Racial controversy
On 22 February 2006 in an interview (Russian) on the Ukrainian sports website sport.com.ua, Blokhin made the following comment:
The more Ukrainians that play in the national league, the more examples for the young generation. Let them learn from [Andriy] Shevchenko or Blokhin and not from some Zumba-Bumba whom they took off a tree, gave him two bananas and now he plays in the Ukrainian League. [...] I remember when I played football, if we lost a game, it was not easy to walk the Kiev streets - there were many friends out there who could beat you up for that. But is there any sense in beating up a foreigner? Okay, you beat him up - next thing he does is pack up and go.
These comments received considerable coverage in Western editorials.[7][8][9]
[edit] Individual honours
- European Footballer of the Year: Winner in 1975, 5th in 1981, 19th in 1974 and 1976
- Soviet Footballer of the Year: 1973, 1974, 1975
- Ukrainian Footballer of the Year: 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981
- Soviet Top League top scorer: 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1977
- Soviet Top League All-Time Goals and Appearances Leader
- UEFA Cup Winners' Cup 1985–86 top scorer[10]
- European Cup 1986–87 second place on top scorers list.[11]
- USSR national football team All-Time Goals and Caps Leader
- Ukraine's Golden Player representative [12]
- ^ a b "Oleg Blokhin: FK Moskva should be among the three prize-winners". Terrikon, News, Statistics, Fans, January 2008. http://www.terrikon.dn.ua/posts/7212. Retrieved on 2008-05-29.
- ^ Soccer-Blokhin quits as Ukraine coach by Mikhail Volobuyev, Gennady Fyodorov and Ken Ferris, Reuters, December 6, 2007
- ^ FK Moscow hire former Ukraine manager Blokhin ESPNsoccernet December 14, 2007
- ^ http://www.sports.ru/football/6293328.html
- ^ http://www.sports.ru/football/6206389.html
- ^ http://www.sports.ru/football/6358902.html
- ^ The soccer Nazis' losing battle by Tony Karon, Los Angeles Times, June 9, 2006
- ^ Setting the scene by Jen Chang, ESPNsoccernet, June 8, 2006
- ^ Daily Record January,2006
- ^ http://www.rsssf.com/ec/ec2tops.html
- ^ http://www.rsssf.com/ec/ec198687det.html#cc
- ^ UEFA.com's announcement
[edit] External links
