Oleg Blokhin

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Oleg Blokhin
Personal information
Full name	Oleg Blokhin
Date of birth	November 5, 1952 (1952-11-05) (age 55)
Place of birth	Kiev, Soviet Union
Height	1.80 m (5 ft 11 in)
Playing position	Forward
Club information
Current club	FC Moscow (Manager)
Youth clubs
1962-1969	Dynamo Kyiv
Senior clubs1
Years	Club	App (Gls)*
1969-1988 1988-1989 1989-1990	Dynamo Kyiv Vorwärts Steyr Aris Limassol Career	433 (211) 41 (9) 22 (5) 496 (225)
National team
1972-1988	USSR	112 (42)
Teams managed
1990-1993 1993-1994 1994-1997 1997-1998 1998-1999 1999-2002 2003-2007 2007-	Olympiakos Piraeus PAOK Saloniki Ionikos PAOK Saloniki AEK Athens Ionikos Ukraine FC Moscow
1 Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only. * Appearances (Goals)

Oleh Volodymyrovych Blokhin (born November 5, 1952), is a Ukrainian football coach of mixed Ukrainian (by mother) and Russian (by father) ethnicity^[1] who was formerly a striker for the USSR national football 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

He played during most of his career for Dynamo Kiev, 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. 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 Olympiakos, AEK, 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 Euro 2008, Blokhin stepped down as coach on 6 December 2007. ^[2] On December 14, 2007 he was named head coach of FC Moscow. ^[3]

[edit] Politics

In 2002 Oleh 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.

[edit] 2006 Racial controversy

On February 22, 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 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.^[4][5][6]

[edit] Individual honours

• European Footballer of the Year: Winner in 1975, 5th in 1981, t-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
• USSR national football team All-Time Goals and Caps Leader
• Ukraine's Golden Player representative ^[7]

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• UEFA.com - Ukraine's Golden Player

Awards
Preceded by Yevhen Rudakov	Ukrainian Footballer of the Year 1972 – 1978	Succeeded by Vitaly Starukhin
Preceded by Johan Cruyff	European Footballer of the Year 1975	Succeeded by Franz Beckenbauer
Preceded by Vitaly Starukhin	Ukrainian Footballer of the Year 1980 – 1981	Succeeded by Anatoly Demyanenko

v • d • e USSR squad - 1982 FIFA World Cup 1 Dasayev • 2 Sulakvelidze • 3 Chivadze • 4 Khidiyatullin • 5 Baltacha • 6 Demyanenko • 7 Shengelia • 8 Bessonov • 9 Gavrilov • 10 Oganesian • 11 Blokhin • 12 Bal • 13 Daraselia • 14 Borovsky • 15 Andreyev • 16 Rodionov • 17 Buryak • 18 Susloparov • 19 Yevtushenko • 20 Romantsev • 21 Viktor Chanov • 22 Vyacheslav Chanov • Coach: Beskov

v • d • e USSR squad - 1986 FIFA World Cup 1 Dasayev • 2 Bessonov • 3 Chivadze • 4 Morozov • 5 Demyanenko • 6 Bubnov • 7 Yaremchuk • 8 Yakovenko • 9 Zavarov • 10 Kuznetsov • 11 Blokhin • 12 Bal • 13 Litovchenko • 14 Rodionov • 15 Larionov • 16 Chanov • 17 Yevtushenko • 18 Protasov • 19 Belanov • 20 Aleinikov • 21 Rats • 22 Krakovsky • Coach: Lobanovsky

v • d • e Ukraine squad - 2006 FIFA World Cup 1 Shovkovskiy • 2 Nesmachniy • 3 Yatsenko • 4 Tymoschuk • 5 Yezerskiy • 6 Rusol • 7 Shevchenko • 8 Shelayev • 9 Husyev • 10 Voronin • 11 Rebrov • 12 Pyatov • 13 Chygrynskiy • 14 Husin • 15 Milevskiy • 16 Vorobei • 17 Vashchuk • 18 Nazarenko • 19 Kalynychenko • 20 Byelik • 21 Rotan • 22 Sviderskiy • 23 Shust • Coach: Blokhin