Thursday, April 14, 2022
The Maybe Men, Part 2
It so happened that the two teams which made everyone sit up and take notice in the first round of the 1986 World Cup emerged from the same European qualifying group. Denmark, with three first-up wins including a 6-1 trouncing of Uruguay and a victory over the mighty West Germans, were one of these two. The other, of course, was the Soviet Union.
The Danes and the Soviets had faced off twice in the qualifiers, of course, and the first encounter took place in Copenhagen in the June of 1985. Denmark had been serial underachievers in the qualifiers up to this point, but the stars (in both senses of the word) finally aligned leading up to the Mexican tournament. A core of hardened European professionals, including the renowned striker Preben Elkjaer, now had the support of a number of talented youngsters, among whom Michael Laudrup stood out.
Against the USSR in Copenhagen, the Danes, led superbly from the back by the venerable attacking sweeper Morten Olsen, were simply imperious. Although the final score was only 4-2, they had made the Soviets look one-paced and tactically naive. The USSR did win the return clash 1-0 thanks to Oleg Protasov's smartly-taken goal, but doubts remained about the ability of the coach, Eduard Malofeev, to get the best out of what was considered a very promising crop of Soviet players.
In the meantime, the avatar of scientific football, Valery Lobanovskyi, was waiting in the wings. His Dynamo Kyiv teams had gone from strength to strength, and in 1986 they achieved their second European title, winning the Cup-Winners Cup. Their 3-0 victory in the final, against Atlético Madrid in Lyon, was garnished with a goal which perfectly embodied Lobanovskyi's philosophy of a football team functioning as a well-oiled machine; a precisely-executed left-wing move, involving four players, ended with a goal for the club's beloved veteran star, Oleg Blokhin.
An incident earlier in that match also demonstrated the Lobanovskyi belief in his players' tactical flexibility: poor Sergey Baltacha, Lobanovskyi's sweeper of choice and a veteran of the 1982 World Cup, succumbed to an Achilles tendon injury which was to keep him out of the Mexico event. Unperturbed, Lobanovskyi sent on his reserve right-back, Andrey Bal, and shifted the incumbent right-back, Vladimir Bessonov, into the centre of defence. Bessonov would remain there in Mexico.
Malofeev's team continued to creak in the run-up to the World Cup, and after yet another disappointing friendly performance, Lobanovskyi was drafted in at the eleventh hour. It was good news for Lobanovskyi's Dynamo protégés, and everyone knew it; it was less pleasing news for those who were expecting to figure in Mexico under Malofeev, but were not likely to please the authoritarian, "scientific" Lobanovskyi. One of the non-Kyiv squad members who survived the cut was Sergey Aleinikov, the versatile Dynamo Minsk midfielder who looked, and played, somewhat like Graeme Souness. In his autobiography, he described what life was like in the lead-up to Mexico:
Lobanovskyi made us train harder. To say it was difficult would be an understatement. In the evening I was just looking to get to bed as soon as possible. For Lobanovskyi the game was about the result, not about fun. Football had to be rational. For him, 1-0 was better than 5-4.
It was not Lobanovskyi's first time in charge of the Soviet team; two brief, unhappy spells in the previous decade, in which he had notably favoured his Kyiv players, had not done his reputation much good. But this time, he was determined to make things work, and he needed players who could enact his philosophy.
In short, he essentially made his Dynamo Kyiv side into the USSR team.
It was certainly the right time to do so, because the recent Cup-Winners Cup victors were a strong, confident unit. Apart from Bessonov at the back, there was the muscular Anatoly Demianenko, a full-back by preference, and the team's de facto leader, Oleg Kuznetsov, who nominally occupied the stopper role but was never averse to coming forward to join the midfield. Tough in the tackle and in the air, Kuznetsov was one of Lobanovskyi's key men.
In midfield, apart from the interloper Aleinikov, there was the busy little winger Ivan Yaremchuk and the all-action Pavel Yakovenko, a Lobanovskyi player par excellence. Vasily Rats, with his catapult of a left foot, patrolled the left flank and lent a hand at corners and set-pieces. And that left the one concession made by "Loba" to old-fashioned midfield creativity: the gifted playmaker Alexander Zavarov.
Zavarov was a player with distinct Dostoyevsky qualities about him. A boy from a small village who lived for football, his talent was first spotted, appropriately enough, by a great playmaker of the past: Joszef Sabo, a hero for the Soviets at the 1966 World Cup. After starring for the USSR's youth team at the 1979 Junior World Cup, at which the Soviets lost to Diego Maradona's Argentina in the final, Zavarov became a prolific scorer with SKA Rostov-on-Don, despite some disciplinary issues. In 1983, Lobanovskyi enticed him to Kyiv.
There he was transformed from a second striker into a deep-lying playmaker, with a habit of running purposefully at defences from behind the lines. By 1986, he had matured into a player of real quality. He had superb close control, a fine range of passing, and a good shot with either foot. In many ways, he was not a classic Lobanovskyi player: although more than willing to drop deep, he contributed little in a defensive capacity. He had a habit, too, of trying the near-impossible at times, running into dense midfield traffic in the hope of dancing his way through the minefield and picking a killer pass at the perfect moment. When it worked, however, it was spectacular.
Zavarov was not a player to die for his coach; this had been evident even early in his career. But Lobanovskyi was shrewd enough to realise that the element of surprise offered by his young midfield maestro made up for the fact that he may not have had the workrate of a Yaremchuk or a Yakovenko.
Above all, Zavarov was important as the chief provider for the final piece of the puzzle: the tireless, prolific, positionally astute striker, Igor Belanov. In days of old, it was Blokhin who fulfilled this role both for Kyiv and the national side; the veteran would be present in Mexico, but he was no longer a regular starter.
The fitness and tactical fluidity of Lobanovskyi's players meant that his approach to a game was impressively flexible. He could set out his troops to attack, or he could stifle the opposition by flooding the midfield and reducing the space available to a Platini or a Maradona. He was certainly not opposed to the long ball, but unlike the British advocates of "direct football", he preferred his teams to use their long passes into the channels to connect with the runs of Belanov and others, to catch the opposition off guard.
Next up, the story of Lobanovskyi's Soviets at Mexico 1986 - the brilliant beginning, and the sad but thrilling end.
