Wednesday, April 13, 2022
The Maybe Men, Part 1
In Russian, there is a word avos' which can be used either as an adverb or a noun. In the former case, it means "maybe" or "hopefully". As a noun, it means something like "fatalism". Some have argued that the long, tragic arc of Russian history has made avos' a central feature of the Russian character; a shrug of the shoulders and a fond but ultimately faint hope that everything will turn out all right.
One person who did not believe in avos' was the legendary manager of the last great Soviet Union football side, Valery Lobanovskyi. Perhaps significantly, he was Ukrainian, not Russian.
Although Lobanovskyi is only faintly remembered by most football fans today, historians of the game know just how important an innovator he was, and how widely his influence was felt. The laptop crew at every major club (formerly the clipboard crew), the ones who studiously count the passes, measure the distances covered, study the heat maps and all the rest, are all heirs of the great "Loba", if often unwittingly.
If avos' meant leaving things to chance, Lobanovskyi was having none of it. He was probably the first manager to bring the full weight of science to bear on the game of football, and unlike many others who purported to do so, he made a serious success of it.
Yet when it came to the heights of international football, avos' had its say, and Lobanovskyi couldn't quite get the most out of the gifted, cohesive side which he simply transplanted from Kyiv to the World Cup and the European Championship.
A distinguished footballer himself, "Loba" was known particularly for his free kicks and corners. With his accuracy and his ability to "bend" the ball, he frequently scored directly from corners, and it was perhaps fitting that his great Soviet side featured players with similar capabilities - notably the adroit midfielder Vasily Rats, whose powerful left foot was a constant danger to the opposition.
After a frustrating end to his playing days, Lobanovskyi began his coaching career at lowly Dnipropetrovsk, whom he took from obscurity to a high finish in the first division within only a few years. His old club Dynamo Kyiv took notice, and brought him back to the club as manager in 1973. He was to stay there, with one brief hiatus, for 13 stunningly successful years.
Along with the sports scientist Anatoly Zelentsov, Lobanovskyi designed a comprehensive, scientific approach to training and tactics at Kyiv, and results followed. Under his aegis, Dynamo won the Soviet title eight times, and twice triumphed in the Cup-Winners Cup, in the days when it was decidedly rare for eastern bloc clubs to lift the major European trophies. For a fuller description of Lobanovksyi's revolutionary methods, I commend you to the relevant chapter in Jonathan Wilson's excellent book Inverting the Pyramid.
Above all, Lobanovskyi believed that outfield players ought to be able to fulfil all roles on the pitch. This was generally considered a Dutch specialty, but Lobanovskyi took the philosophy a good deal more seriously, and unlike the Dutch, he persisted with it beyond the heyday of "Total Football". It did not always work out for the best, as we shall see.
A droll figure on the bench, with his customary back-and-forth rocking indicating intense concentration on the game, Lobanovskyi was the antithesis of the "one of the lads" type of manager, and his obsessive insistence on maximum effort and fitness and tactical flexibility did not always go down well with his charges, although they always respected him. Wilson, in his book, quotes the Dynamo Minsk goalkeeper Mikhail Vergeenko, comparing Lobanovskyi to his predecessor as USSR coach, the former World Cup striker Eduard Malofeev:
Lobanovskyi was a coach by mathematics; Malofeev was more romantic. The main thing he (Malofeev) wanted from the players was that they should express themselves on the pitch. If you give your all, he said, the fans will love you.
In Part 2, a more detailed look at the USSR's qualification for the 1986 World Cup, the handover from Malofeev to Lobanovskyi, the "Kyiv takeover", and an introduction to the other main character in our story: the richly talented but perpetually ill-starred Alexander Zavarov.
