Oleg Vladimirovich Blokhin, orOleh Volodymyrovych Blokhin (Ukrainian:Оле́г Володи́мирович Блохі́н,Russian:Оле́г Влади́мирович Блохи́н; born 5 November 1952), is a Ukrainian formerfootball player and manager. Regarded as one of the greatest footballers of his generation, Blokhin was a standoutstriker forDynamo Kyiv and theSoviet Union.[2]
In 2011, Blokhin, together withIgor Belanov andVitaliy Starukhin were named as "the legends of Ukrainian football" at the Victory of Football awards.[3]
Blokhin was born inKyiv, the capital of theUkrainian SSR, in 1952. His motherKateryna Adamenko was multiple champion of USSR in thepentathlon, sprint andlong jump. He was born to a Russian father and Ukrainian mother. His fatherVladimir Blokhin was a police officer, a World War II veteran, and a competitive sprinter. Owing to his parents, Blokhin quickly mastered sprint, and by the age of 16 ran 60 m in less than 7 seconds, and 100 m in 11.0 seconds.[4]
Blokhin was one of the greatest players in the world throughout the 1970s, hitting the target regularly through a period of great success at his hometown clubDynamo Kyiv and becoming the greatest goalscorer in the history of the Soviet League, which was one of Europe's strongest. Normally a forward or winger, Blokhin was most renowned for possessing exceptional pace.
Blokhin played during most of his career for Dynamo Kyiv, becoming theUSSR national championship's all-time leader and goalscorer with 211 goals, as well as making more appearances than any other player with 432 appearances. He won the championship 8 times. He led Dynamo to theUEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1975 and 1986, scoring a goal in each final. Blokhin is also the USSR national football team's mostcapped player with 112 caps, as well as their all-time leading goalscorer with 42 goals; he played in the1982 and1986FIFA World Cups where he scored one goal in each. He was one of the first Soviet players to play abroad, signing for Austria'sVorwärts Steyr in 1988, he also played in Cyprus withAris.
In 1979 Blokhin played a couple of games forUkraine at the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR.[5]
He began serving as the head coach of theUkraine national team in September 2003.[6] Under his leadership, Ukrainequalified for a major tournament for the first time as an independent nation, reaching the2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany. Ukraine reached the quarter-finals of the tournament, losing to eventual championsItaly. Following the side's failure to reachUEFA Euro 2008, Blokhin stepped down as coach on 6 December 2007.[7]
On 14 December 2007, he was named head coach ofFC Moscow.[8] The club finished 9th (from 16) and after the season ended Blokhin was fired from the club.[9] At the end of the season, Blokhin announced that if he knew how things would go in FC Moscow, he would have never signed there. This was because the club released many important players without Blokhin's permission yet still had many high expectations.[10] Others said that the reason Blokhin failed in FC Moscow was that he and the press didn't have a friendly relationship, and because of that the press was constantly attacking Blokhin and that damaged his status among the players.[11]
On 21 April 2011, Blokhin was again appointed head coach of the Ukraine national team.[12][13] He led the team inUEFA Euro 2012 on home soil, beatingSweden but exiting at thegroup stage after defeats toFrance andEngland.
Blokhin in 2012
On 25 September 2012,Dynamo Kyiv signed Blokhin to lead the club for the next four years.[14] His final matches in charge of Ukraine wereWorld Cup qualifiers againstMoldova andMontenegro in October 2012.[15] Blokhin was dismissed as Dynamo's manager by the club's PresidentIhor Surkis on 17 April 2014 because of the "unsatisfactory results of the team".[14] The day before, in a press conference after Dynamo had lost a match againstShakhtar Donetsk, Blokhin had already stated that he had decided to resign.[14] Under his leadership Dynamo never qualified (a rare occasion for the club) for theUEFA Champions League and performed poorly in theUEFA Europa League.[14] In his first year his team finished third in theUkrainian Premier League and in his second year (when he was fired) Dynamo was seven points behind Ukrainian Premier League leadersDnipro Dnipropetrovsk and Shakhtar Donetsk.[14]
Blokhin's father, Volodymyr Blokhin, is a native ofMoscow, a veteran of theWorld War II, survivor of theLeningrad blockade, and a former Soviet law enforcement agent. He later worked as a sports functionary for the Soviet Dynamo Society. Blokhin's motherKateryna Adamenko is from Nebrat village inBorodianka Raion,Kyiv Oblast. She originally worked at a Kyiv sewing factory, but eventually discovered hidden athletic talents and became the Soviet champion intrack and field as well as pentathlon. After retiring from sports, she became a staff member at one of Kyiv's universities.
Blokhin was married toIrina Deriugina, a top coach and former world champion inrhythmic gymnastics, but the couple divorced in the early 1990s. Blokhin and Deriugina have a daughter, singerIryna Blokhina, who wrote and performed the Euro 2012 anthem.[17]
Blokhin and his second wife, Angela, have two daughters, Hanna (born 2001) and Katerina (born 2002).[18]
^Yuri Yuris (27 September 2002).Олег Блохин: Место В Истории [Oleg Blokhin: Place in History].Sport-Express (in Russian).Archived from the original on 19 April 2019. Retrieved25 February 2015.
^"Oleg Blokhin".National Football Teams. Benjamin Strack-Zimmermann. Retrieved2 January 2011.
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