Lev Yashin

Biography

Lev Yashin is Soviet footballer, goalkeeper, who played for Dynamo Moscow and the USSR national team. Olympic champion in 1956 and European champion in 1960, 5-time champion of the USSR, Honored Master of Sports of the USSR (1957). Hero of Socialist Labor (1990), colonel. Lev Ivanovich Yashin was born in Moscow, in the Bogorodskoye area. In the courtyard of the house, local children, including Lev Yashin, constantly played football, games continued in the spring, summer and autumn, in any weather, in the dark. In these yard games, Yashin received the first goalkeeper experience. The beginning of the Great Patriotic War found the 11-year-old Lyova near Podolsk - with relatives, to whom her parents sent her son for a summer vacation. Yashin celebrated his twelfth birthday by unloading a train with factory machines. He went to work at this plant, becoming the apprentice locksmith in the spring of 1943. At the age of 16, Lev Yashin received the first award of the Motherland - the medal "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945." Lev, while continuing to work at the factory, devoted all his free time to his favorite game, playing as a goalkeeper for the Tushin national team. At 18, he was drafted into the army. He served in Moscow, and here he was noticed by the coach of Dynamo football club (Moscow) A. I. Chernyshev, who invited him to the club's youth team. Since then, Lev Yashin played only for this club, until the end of his football career in 1971. Together with his club, Lev Yashin five times (1954, 1955, 1957, 1959 and 1963) became the champion of the USSR and three times won the USSR Cup in football. Since 1954, Yashin is the goalkeeper of the USSR national team, for which he spent 74 matches. Together with the national team in 1956, Yashin won the Olympic Games in Melbourne, the 1960 European Cup. As part of the national team, he played three times in the final stage of the World Cup: in 1958 in Sweden, in 1962 in Chile and in 1966 in England. The highest achievement in the world championships is fourth in the 1966 championship. After the completion of his football career, Yashin graduated from the school of trainers. He worked as a coach of the second national team of the USSR and, for some time, of children's teams.