Playing position Role Football player 1962–1969 Dynamo Kyiv Height 1.80 m | Years Team Grandchildren Jacqueline Brynzak Name Oleh Blokhin | |
Full name Oleh Volodymyrovych Blokhin Date of birth (1952-11-05) 5 November 1952 (age 63) Place of birth Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union Children Ireesha, Kateryna Blokhina, Hanna Blokhina Spouse Anzhela Blokhina (m. 2000), Irina Deriugina Parents Vladimir Ivanovich Blokhin, Katerina Zakharivna Adamenko Similar People Serhiy Rebrov, Ireesha, Ihor Surkis, Oleksandr Shovkovskiy, Igor Belanov | ||
7 Greatest Left Wingers of All Time
Oleh Volodymyrovych Blokhin (Ukrainian: Оле́г Володи́мирович Блохі́н, Russian: Оле́г Влади́мирович Блохи́н; born 5 November 1952 in Kiev) is a former Ukrainian football player and manager. Blokhin was formerly a standout striker for Dynamo Kyiv and the Soviet Union.
Contents
- 7 Greatest Left Wingers of All Time
- Career
- Playing
- Coaching
- Club
- International goals
- Managerial statistics
- Politics
- Family
- Individual
- Ballon dOr
- References
He holds the all-time top goalscorer record for both Dynamo Kyiv (266 goals) and the Soviet Union national team (42 goals), as well as being the overall top goalscorer in the history of the Soviet Top League (211 goals). He is also the only player to have been capped over 100 times for the Soviet Union and holds Dynamo's appearance record with 582 appearances during his 18-year spell at the club. With Dynamo, Blokhin won eight Soviet league titles, five national cups and two European Cup Winners' Cups. He also competed for the Soviet Union at the 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games and 1982 and 1986 FIFA World Cups. During his playing career he won the Soviet Footballer of the Year award three times and the Ukrainian Footballer of the Year award nine times (both records). In 1975, he was named European Footballer of the Year, winning the Ballon d'Or, becoming the second Soviet and the first Ukrainian player to achieve such a feat.
As a coach, he has had two spells in charge of the Ukrainian national team, managing the team at the 2006 FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euro 2012.
In 2011, Blokhin, together with Igor Belanov and Vitaliy Starukhin were named as "the legends of Ukrainian football" at the Victory of Football awards.
Career
Blokhin was born in Kiev, the capital of the Ukrainian SSR, in 1952 to a Russian father from Moscow and Ukrainian mother.
Playing
Blokhin was one of the greatest forwards in the world throughout the 1970s, hitting the target regularly through a period of great success at his hometown club Dynamo Kyiv and becoming the greatest goalscorer in the history of the Soviet League. Only the regime in the Soviet Union prevented him from moving abroad to play in Europe's strongest leagues. Normally a forward or winger, Blokhin was most renowned for possessing exceptional pace.
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 FIFA 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.
In 1979 Blokhin played couple of games for Ukraine at the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR.
Coaching
After retiring as a player, Blokhin coached Greek clubs Olympiacos (Under him they won the Greek Cup and the Greek Super Cup in 1992), PAOK, AEK Athens, and Ionikos.
He began serving as the head coach of the Ukrainian national team in September 2003. Under his leadership, Ukraine qualified for a major tournament for the first time as an independent nation, reaching the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany. Ukraine reached the quarter-finals of the tournament, losing to eventual champions Italy. Following the side's failure to reach UEFA Euro 2008, Blokhin stepped down as coach on 6 December 2007.
On 14 December 2007, he was named head coach of FC Moscow. The club finished 9th (from 16) and after the season ended Blokhin was fired from the club. 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. 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 damaged his status among the players.
On 21 April 2011 Blokhin was again appointed head coach of the Ukrainian national team. He led the team in UEFA Euro 2012 on home soil, beating Sweden but exiting at the group stage after defeats to France and England.
On 25 September 2012, Dynamo Kyiv signed Blokhin to lead the club for the next four years. His final matches in charge of Ukraine were World Cup qualifiers against Moldova and Montenegro in October 2012. Blokhin was dismissed as Dynamo's manager by the club's President Ihor Surkis on 17 April 2014 because of the "unsatisfactory results of the team". The day before, in a press conference after Dynamo had lost a match against Shakhtar Donetsk, Blokhin had already stated that he had decided to resign. Under his leadership Dynamo never qualified (a rare occasion for the club) for the UEFA Champions League and performed poorly in the UEFA Europa League. In his first year his team finished third in the Ukrainian Premier League and in his second year (when he was fired) Dynamo was seven points behind Ukrainian Premier League leaders Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk and Shakhtar Donetsk.
Club
International goals
Score and results list Soviet Union's goal tally first.Managerial statistics
As of 1 November 2015Politics
In 1998 Blokhin was elected to Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine's parliament) for Hromada. He joined Hromada while still being a member of the Communist Party of Ukraine. In 2002, Blokhin was elected to Verkhovna Rada for a second term. In October 2002, he joined the United Social Democratic Party of Ukraine.
In order to avoid controversy, Blokhin remained quiet during the Euromaidan events. However, he did anger some supporters when during the Euromaidan he made the following comment: "How do I react to the Euromaidan? Like a resident of Kiev. Why is it all happening in Kiev, and not in Donetsk or Dnepropetrovsk? Whatever is happening, life continues, and now problems are caused for simple residents - You can't get into town. It's wrong".
Family
Blokhin's father, Vladimir Ivanovich Blokhin, is a native of Moscow, a veteran of the World War II, survivor of the Leningrad blockade, and a former Soviet law enforcement agent. Vladimir Blokhin later worked as a sports functionary for the Soviet Dynamo Society. Blokhin's mother Katerina Zakharivna (née Adamenko) is from a village in the Borodyanka Raion. She originally worked at a Kyiv sewing factory, but eventually discovered hidden athletic talents and became the Soviet champion in track and field as well as pentathlon. After retiring from sports, she became a staff member at one of Kyiv's universities.
Blokhin was married to Irina Deriugina, a top coach and former world champion in rhythmic gymnastics, but the couple divorced in the early 1990s. Blokhin and Deriugina have a daughter, singer Iryna Blokhina, who wrote and performed the Euro 2012 anthem.
Blokhin and his second wife, Angela, have two daughters, Hanna (born 2001) and Katerina (born 2002).