Interview by Oleg Kusov. Exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza
Interesting guests are always welcome at Vestnik Kavkaza. Oleg Kusov gives all guests in the studio a opportunity to speak. These conversations are not only about the Caucasus. A half-hour conversation over tea passes quickly. The Take My Word section records conversations in video, audio and text formats. The guest of Vestnik Kavkaza today is Valery Vinokurov, a sports journalist and writer.
- … During my visits I met Tatyana Zatulovskaya. Need I explain who that is?
- Not to me, but for the audience…
- Well, she is an international chess master, she was the best female chess player in the history of Azerbaijan, one of the best in the USSR. She was the USSR champion, twice Olympic champion, a challenger for world champion. By the way, she did become the world champion twice, but only later, among seniors. She was an opponent of Nona Gaprindashvili. We met, we were both unmarried and soon got married. It turned out that two players of Neftyanik I remembered very well – the Eynullayev brothers, the senior [brother] Kemal and junior Nadir – turned out to be the first cousins of Tanya. Their mother, nee Zatulovskaya, married Eynullayev. She was the sister of Tanya’s father. It was a big family, I think he had seven sisters. They were first cousins. At some event, I think it was a sad one, the grandmother died (they had one grandmother) and we met them there. I knew them as football players, they knew me as a journalist, I had written about Neftchi by then, it was the early 1970s. Their careers ended, they were over 30, we seemed young, they were over 30, the older one was about 35, I do not remember… They worked as coaches for children’s teams in Baku. In Baku, by the way, there was a very good junior football school. Many coaches headed it, there were dynasties. In particular, one of the very good children’s coaches was Artem Falyan who played for Neftyanik in the 1950s, in the top league, before the club was relegated. Victor Shevchenko played there, by the way, the father of Vitaly Shevchenko, Valya Khlystov played, he later became an assistant of Aleskerov for many years, the second coach. What is my point? They worked in different children’s teams. So, visiting them, I met them at anniversaries or sad events, the family was big… It turned out that I knew everything about their life from the team of masters, I was always close to all of them, I learned everything about Azerbaijani junior football, its history from the Eynullayev brothers… They knew the history of Neftyanik very well. It turned out that the team was very close to me for 15-20 years, so I can talk about it forever.
- Here is an interesting individual, Kazbek Tuayev, who worked in Ossetia, his second homeland, for a very long time. How do you think he realized himself as a football player and a coach?
- I am not sure about the coaching because, as a coach, he started when Ahmed Aleskerov left, I was not that familiar with the team then. I often visited Baku and talked with Alik Mamedov… He visited it twice as a senior coach, then he was fired, then he became the coach again. Many famous coaches worked there: Vasily Nikolayevich Sokolov, Boris Andreyevich Arkadyev, Vyacheslav Dmitriyevich Solovyov. But I was never so familiar with the team then. That is why I cannot say what kind of coach Tuayev was, I don't have the courage to characterize him. I think he must have been a good coach. Although on the other hand… I will take the chance to tell you about my talk with Victor Alexanderovich Maslov, whom I once asked: “Of all the teams you trained, which player do you think would become a very good coach?” He named Markarov and Muntyan. But we know that they never became notable coaches. If Maslov could not determine?! As a player, I remember him, Tuayev, I really liked him a lot. And Yura Kuznetsov talked a lot about his interaction with him and said that something should be explained to someone and should be repeated 10 times. Kazbek only needed telling once and not 10 times. He grasped fast. Sitting in the stands, I certainly could not know it, but I could feel an interaction like with Kuznetsov, then Makarov and Banishevsky. I wrote about the trio of strikers in a feature story for Neftyanik Magazine. I was studying everyone’s game and the way they interacted, with the midfielders too. So as a player I remember him very well, but I cannot say anything about coaching.
- Listening to you, I recall words Vladimir Gutsayev said to me about the USSR championships: it was a grand sight! Of course, it was a very bright mosaic. The Russian championship is certainly less attractive.
- Of course. It is also because of the problem of mercenary players. Let’s not talk about it, I think it has absolutely nothing to do with our recollections. I still feel uncomfortable. There has recently been a match – good, bad, that is not the point – it is the Russian Super Cup. CSKA vs. Rostov – 3:1. Let’s not talk about the plot moves that achieved it. But all four goals were scored by mercenary players, not a single Russian. It is the first of the twelve Super Cups in which no Russians distinguished themselves.
- It appears that it is not the Russian cup.
- That is why it is better not to draw parallels. I agree with Gutsayev, of course. The trio of strikers of Dynamo Tbilisi: Gutsayev – Kipiani – Shengel. The Baku trio: Tuayev – Banishevsky – Markarov can never be confused! We can also mention the trios of Moscow Dynamo and Kiev Dynamo. What diversity! When the USSR championship stopped, I wrote a big article I am proud of. It was titled “The football we lost.” As you know, we lost not only football, it does not matter what else we lost. But I explained the football we lost there. Suppose we imagine the national teams of England, Italy, Germany, Brazil. We imagine their gameplay manner. The enormous achievement of the USSR national team and its enormous advantage, in comparison with the skilled and famous Spanish, Italians and others, was that it had different styles, different characters. Let’s say it goes on the pitch. On the right flank we have Chislenko, on the left – Meskhi. I am taking random examples now, I do not even remember whether they ever played together for the national team or not. At the 1966 World Championship, Metreveli was on the right, Banishevsky on the left, Malafeyev. The three were players with different manners, different styles. It was very hard for opponents to adjust to the USSR national team, because even the Moscow school differed from the Leningrad school then, not to mention the Azerbaijani, Georgian, Armenian, Lithuanian ones. In other words, if we take any period of our national team, lucky or unlucky, it does not matter. There were plenty of unlucky ones, what can we do about it? When did the bad luck start? When Dynamo Kiev became the national team. The diversity of styles was lost. Even at the 1982 World Championship, when Kipiani was not allowed to join, they decided that Gavrilov would be enough, there was still not such diversity among the strikers. There was diversity among the defenders though, but diversity among the strikers was gone. Shengel would play then, but Shengel without Kipiani is a totally different story. I'll actually take a lucky championship in which our national team entered the quarterfinals of the group, where at the second stage it won a match against Belgium, but drew against Poland, Poland scored more goals against Belgium and went through. It was a lucky championship. About an unlucky one? Take 1976. When it was just the Kievans, the main topic of my article “The football we lost” is totally missing. You will never even adjust! The coach gives the instruction - you have Metreveli on the right side, Blokhin on the left, they have totally different styles. How can a coach pick their opponents?
Says Valery VinokurovInterview by Oleg Kusov. Exclusively for Vestnik KavkazaInteresting guests are always welcome at Vestnik Kavkaza. Oleg Kusov gives all guests in the studio a opportunity to speak. These conversations are not only about the Caucasus. A half-hour conversation over tea passes quickly. The Take My Word section records conversations in video, audio and text formats. The guest of Vestnik Kavkaza today is Valery Vinokurov, a sports journalist and writer.- … During my visits I met Tatyana Zatulovskaya. Need I explain who that is?- Not to me, but for the audience…- Well, she is an international chess master, she was the best female chess player in the history of Azerbaijan, one of the best in the USSR. She was the USSR champion, twice Olympic champion, a challenger for world champion. By the way, she did become the world champion twice, but only later, among seniors. She was an opponent of Nona Gaprindashvili. We met, we were both unmarried and soon got married. It turned out that two players of Neftyanik I remembered very well – the Eynullayev brothers, the senior [brother] Kemal and junior Nadir – turned out to be the first cousins of Tanya. Their mother, nee Zatulovskaya, married Eynullayev. She was the sister of Tanya’s father. It was a big family, I think he had seven sisters. They were first cousins. At some event, I think it was a sad one, the grandmother died (they had one grandmother) and we met them there. I knew them as football players, they knew me as a journalist, I had written about Neftchi by then, it was the early 1970s. Their careers ended, they were over 30, we seemed young, they were over 30, the older one was about 35, I do not remember… They worked as coaches for children’s teams in Baku. In Baku, by the way, there was a very good junior football school. Many coaches headed it, there were dynasties. In particular, one of the very good children’s coaches was Artem Falyan who played for Neftyanik in the 1950s, in the top league, before the club was relegated. Victor Shevchenko played there, by the way, the father of Vitaly Shevchenko, Valya Khlystov played, he later became an assistant of Aleskerov for many years, the second coach. What is my point? They worked in different children’s teams. So, visiting them, I met them at anniversaries or sad events, the family was big… It turned out that I knew everything about their life from the team of masters, I was always close to all of them, I learned everything about Azerbaijani junior football, its history from the Eynullayev brothers… They knew the history of Neftyanik very well. It turned out that the team was very close to me for 15-20 years, so I can talk about it forever.- Here is an interesting individual, Kazbek Tuayev, who worked in Ossetia, his second homeland, for a very long time. How do you think he realized himself as a football player and a coach?- I am not sure about the coaching because, as a coach, he started when Ahmed Aleskerov left, I was not that familiar with the team then. I often visited Baku and talked with Alik Mamedov… He visited it twice as a senior coach, then he was fired, then he became the coach again. Many famous coaches worked there: Vasily Nikolayevich Sokolov, Boris Andreyevich Arkadyev, Vyacheslav Dmitriyevich Solovyov. But I was never so familiar with the team then. That is why I cannot say what kind of coach Tuayev was, I don't have the courage to characterize him. I think he must have been a good coach. Although on the other hand… I will take the chance to tell you about my talk with Victor Alexanderovich Maslov, whom I once asked: “Of all the teams you trained, which player do you think would become a very good coach?” He named Markarov and Muntyan. But we know that they never became notable coaches. If Maslov could not determine?! As a player, I remember him, Tuayev, I really liked him a lot. And Yura Kuznetsov talked a lot about his interaction with him and said that something should be explained to someone and should be repeated 10 times. Kazbek only needed telling once and not 10 times. He grasped fast. Sitting in the stands, I certainly could not know it, but I could feel an interaction like with Kuznetsov, then Makarov and Banishevsky. I wrote about the trio of strikers in a feature story for Neftyanik Magazine. I was studying everyone’s game and the way they interacted, with the midfielders too. So as a player I remember him very well, but I cannot say anything about coaching.- Listening to you, I recall words Vladimir Gutsayev said to me about the USSR championships: it was a grand sight! Of course, it was a very bright mosaic. The Russian championship is certainly less attractive.- Of course. It is also because of the problem of mercenary players. Let’s not talk about it, I think it has absolutely nothing to do with our recollections. I still feel uncomfortable. There has recently been a match – good, bad, that is not the point – it is the Russian Super Cup. CSKA vs. Rostov – 3:1. Let’s not talk about the plot moves that achieved it. But all four goals were scored by mercenary players, not a single Russian. It is the first of the twelve Super Cups in which no Russians distinguished themselves.- It appears that it is not the Russian cup.- That is why it is better not to draw parallels. I agree with Gutsayev, of course. The trio of strikers of Dynamo Tbilisi: Gutsayev – Kipiani – Shengel. The Baku trio: Tuayev – Banishevsky – Markarov can never be confused! We can also mention the trios of Moscow Dynamo and Kiev Dynamo. What diversity! When the USSR championship stopped, I wrote a big article I am proud of. It was titled “The football we lost.” As you know, we lost not only football, it does not matter what else we lost. But I explained the football we lost there. Suppose we imagine the national teams of England, Italy, Germany, Brazil. We imagine their gameplay manner. The enormous achievement of the USSR national team and its enormous advantage, in comparison with the skilled and famous Spanish, Italians and others, was that it had different styles, different characters. Let’s say it goes on the pitch. On the right flank we have Chislenko, on the left – Meskhi. I am taking random examples now, I do not even remember whether they ever played together for the national team or not. At the 1966 World Championship, Metreveli was on the right, Banishevsky on the left, Malafeyev. The three were players with different manners, different styles. It was very hard for opponents to adjust to the USSR national team, because even the Moscow school differed from the Leningrad school then, not to mention the Azerbaijani, Georgian, Armenian, Lithuanian ones. In other words, if we take any period of our national team, lucky or unlucky, it does not matter. There were plenty of unlucky ones, what can we do about it? When did the bad luck start? When Dynamo Kiev became the national team. The diversity of styles was lost. Even at the 1982 World Championship, when Kipiani was not allowed to join, they decided that Gavrilov would be enough, there was still not such diversity among the strikers. There was diversity among the defenders though, but diversity among the strikers was gone. Shengel would play then, but Shengel without Kipiani is a totally different story. I'll actually take a lucky championship in which our national team entered the quarterfinals of the group, where at the second stage it won a match against Belgium, but drew against Poland, Poland scored more goals against Belgium and went through. It was a lucky championship. About an unlucky one? Take 1976. When it was just the Kievans, the main topic of my article “The football we lost” is totally missing. You will never even adjust! The coach gives the instruction - you have Metreveli on the right side, Blokhin on the left, they have totally different styles. How can a coach pick their opponen
