Yashin's widow Valentina Yashina lives in Moscow. “That was a brilliant save,” an Icelander waxed lyrical about the team’s goalkeeper in Moscow after their first match in the World Cup. “Everybody talks about Lionel Messi missing the penalty kick. No one cares about the heroic save by Hannes Halldorsson,” the frustrated fan said. “Except Icelanders.”
The plaint brought back memories of a celebrated footballer from the Soviet era. Lev Yashin had saved more than 150 penalty kicks in his illustrious career that was topped with the Ballon d’Or. Yashin, nicknamed “Black Spider”, is the only goalkeeper to win the coveted award.
Yashin's widow Valentina Yashina lives in Moscow. I tried to meet her through Russian journalists as soon as I landed in the city but the 88-year-old woman said that she had stopped talking to media.
The next best option was to get a copy of Russian magazine Rodina with a detailed interview of Yashina, Dmitry Podyapolsky told me.
The engineering student, who had written a World Cup curtain raiser for ‘The Week’, proved right. The five-page interview with rare photos offered valuable insights into a glorious past when Soviet football dominated European stadiums.
The legend
Yashin is a legend in Russia. He is part of the Soviet era nostalgia. He died a year before the Soviet Union’s fall in 1991. The goalkeeper, however, lives on in memory. Almost all cities in Russia has a memorial for one of the greatest footballers in history.
Yashin did not have an easy time on field. The 1950s were also the time of Alfredo Di Stefano, the original Argentine superstar who made Real Madrid numero uno in Europe.
The Soviet football team won an Olympic gold in 1956 and took home the glories after the first European Championship in 1960. Yashin became a hero in Soviet Union after he blocked the Yugoslavian shots to win 2-1 in Paris.
Fall and rebound
As with other heroes, Yashin too fell from grace after the Soviet Union lost out to Chile in the quarterfinal of the 1962 World Cup. He had also failed to block a corner kick from Colombia in an earlier match. The crowd booed him when he returned to his home country.
Yashin, however, bounced to popularity the next year. He was part of the 'rest-of-the-world' team that beat England in Wembley. His saves reminded the world why he was counted among the greatest. He was also honoured with the Ballon d’Or that year.
His best was yet to come. Clad in dark blue jersey and shorts, which earned him the famous moniker, he led Soviet Union to the fourth place in the World Cup in 1966.
Swan song
Yashin retired when he was 41. His last match in the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow in 1971 was watched by about a lakh people and the legends of his time, including Pele, Franz Beckenbauer and Eusebio.
When Russia played Saudi Arabia in the opening match of the World Cup in the same stadium, a Russian journalist remarked, “If Yashin were to play now, you could expect the same crowd as in 71.”
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