Oleg Vladimirovich Blokhin, or Oleh Volodymyrovych Blokhin (Ukrainian: Оле́г Володи́мирович Блохі́н, Russian: Оле́г Влади́мирович Блохи́н; born 5 November 1952), is a Ukrainian and Soviet former football player and manager. Regarded as one of the greatest footballers of his generation, Blokhin was a standout striker for Dynamo Kyiv and the Soviet Union.[2]
He holds the all-time top goalscorer record for both Dynamo Kiev (266 goals) and the Soviet Union national team (42 goals), as well as being the overall top goalscorer in the history of the Soviet Top League (211 goals). He is also the only player to have been capped over 100 times for the Soviet Union and holds Dynamo's appearance record with 582 appearances during his 18-year spell at the club. With Dynamo, Blokhin won eight Soviet league titles, five national cups and two European Cup Winners' Cups. He also competed for the Soviet Union at the 1972 and 1976Olympic Games and 1982 and 1986FIFA World Cups. During his playing career he won the Soviet Footballer of the Year award three times and the Ukrainian Footballer of the Year award nine times (both records). In 1975, he was named European Footballer of the Year, winning the Ballon d'Or, becoming the second Soviet and the first Ukrainian player to achieve such a feat.
In 2011, Blokhin, together with Igor Belanov and Vitaliy Starukhin were named as "the legends of Ukrainian football" at the Victory of Football awards.[3]
Early life
Blokhin was born in Kyiv, the capital of the Ukrainian SSR, in 1952. His mother Kateryna Adamenko was multiple champion of USSR in the pentathlon, sprint and long jump. He was born to a Russian father and Ukrainian mother. His father Vladimir 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]
Playing career
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 club Dynamo 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 the USSR 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 the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1975 and 1986, scoring a goal in each final. Blokhin is also the USSR national football team's most capped player with 112 caps, as well as their all-time leading goalscorer with 42 goals; he played in the 1982 and 1986FIFA World Cups where he scored one goal in each. He was one of the first Soviet players to play abroad, signing for Austria's Vorwärts Steyr in 1988, he also played in Cyprus with Aris.
In 1979 Blokhin played a couple of games for Ukraine at the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR.[5]
He began serving as the head coach of the Ukraine national team in September 2003.[6] Under his leadership, Ukraine qualified for a major tournament for the first time as an independent nation, reaching the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany. Ukraine reached the quarter-finals of the tournament, losing to eventual champions Italy. Following the side's failure to reach UEFA Euro 2008, Blokhin stepped down as coach on 6 December 2007.[7]
On 14 December 2007, he was named head coach of FC 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 in UEFA Euro 2012 on home soil, beating Sweden but exiting at the group stage after defeats to France and England.
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 were World Cup qualifiers against Moldova and Montenegro in October 2012.[15] Blokhin was dismissed as Dynamo's manager by the club's President Ihor 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 against Shakhtar 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 the UEFA Champions League and performed poorly in the UEFA Europa League.[14] In his first year his team finished third in the Ukrainian Premier League and in his second year (when he was fired) Dynamo was seven points behind Ukrainian Premier League leaders Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk and Shakhtar Donetsk.[14]
Blokhin's father, Volodymyr Blokhin, is a native of Moscow, a veteran of the World War II, survivor of the Leningrad blockade, and a former Soviet law enforcement agent. He later worked as a sports functionary for the Soviet Dynamo Society. Blokhin's mother Kateryna Adamenko is from Nebrat village in Borodianka Raion, Kyiv Oblast. She originally worked at a Kyiv sewing factory, but eventually discovered hidden athletic talents and became the Soviet champion in track and field as well as pentathlon. After retiring from sports, she became a staff member at one of Kyiv's universities.
Blokhin was married to Irina Deriugina, a top coach and former world champion in rhythmic gymnastics, but the couple divorced in the early 1990s. Blokhin and Deriugina have a daughter, singer Iryna 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]
Career statistics
Club
Appearances and goals by club, season and competition
^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. Retrieved 25 February 2015.
^"Oleg Blokhin". National Football Teams. Benjamin Strack-Zimmermann. Retrieved 2 January 2011.
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