Wednesday, April 20, 2022
The Maybe Men, Part 7
1988 was a pivotal year for Soviet football. Players from some of the "satellite countries" in the eastern bloc had long been venturing to western clubs in their mature years. But now, with glasnost, players from the heart of the Red empire started to do so as well. With the stock of the USSR team never higher after their runners-up finish at Euro 1988, there was plenty of interest from clubs throughout the western half of the continent.
Yet most of the Soviet players failed to shine once they had made their long-awaited moves. Many of them were already veterans, and their best football was in the past. Others simply couldn't recreate the form that they had shown in Mexico and Germany. The renowned keeper Rinat Dasaev joined Sevilla in Spain and became a fan favourite, but his performances were mixed. Igor Belanov, in 1989, joined Borussia Moenchengladbach. The swift, incisive attacker, with his formidable international record, "should" have been a roaring success. But his period in Germany was barren.
That eternal issue for Soviet players, money squabbles, may have had an effect on the initial efforts of the overseas brigade. Vagiz Khidiatullin, the accomplished sweeper who had played an important role in the Soviets' run to the 1988 final, moved to Toulouse on a contract of $30,000 dollars per month. From this amount, the Soviet authorities took a staggering $29,000 in tax. The reason given to him? "Our ambassador [in France] only gets $1,200 a month. You can't earn more than the ambassador!"
Despite this humiliation, Khidiatullin did well in France. But the most high-profile move of all turned out to be the most disappointing.
Since the retirement of their hero Michel Platini in 1987, Juventus had been looking for a player worthy of wearing the coveted No.10 shirt that had belonged to the Frenchman. They decided on the Dynamo Kyiv and USSR playmaker Alexander Zavarov, and secured his services in the summer of 1988 after complex negotiations with the Soviet bureaucracy. Like Khidiatullin, Zavarov received a paltry wage after the Soviet state had taken its share. But there were consolations, such as a top-of-the-line Fiat courtesy of the Agnelli family.
Zavarov made an encouraging start, scoring twice in a Coppa Italia tie against Brescia and finding the net in his Serie A debut, against Cesena. As the season wore on, however, his form fell away. Struggling with the language, the culture and the new tactical demands of Italian football, and unwilling to face up to the intrusive Italian press, Zavarov ended up frequently warming the bench during the spring.
Juventus were prepared to put him out on loan, but decided instead to give him a comrade from his former days to brighten his time in Turin: they signed Sergey Aleinikov, his USSR team-mate from the 1986 World Cup and the 1988 Euros. Unfortunately, Aleinikov too found the transition difficult and the fans unforgiving; struggling for fitness and fluency, he was given the nickname "Alentikov" in reference to his supposedly sluggish play. And Zavarov's second season, punctuated by injury, was no more successful than his first.
In a very touching gesture, Zavarov's Juventus predecessor Michel Platini, only too aware of the tremendous pressures of the Italian game, helped to arrange a transfer to his boyhood club Nancy for the unsettled playmaker. Much happier in the less frenzied environment of French football, Zavarov settled well in his new digs and spent his thirties in France, easing into retirement at the little Saint-Dizier club. So much for Juventus.
Zavarov's experience was, in a way, typical of so many of the early Soviet expatriate footballers; reared in an environment in which the team ethic was paramount and the press was kept at arm's length, he ultimately found the pressures of a big club intolerable. It was probably with some relief that he, and Aleinikov, returned to the USSR team - and Valery Lobanovskyi - prior to the 1990 World Cup in Italy. The Soviet Union might be on the point of collapse, but Lobanovskyi's experienced players, now toughened by the rigours of European club football, were expected to make a good showing in their second World Cup.
The very first game in Italy shattered those illusions. To be concluded in Part 8.
