Fyodor Cherenkov

Fyodor Fyodorovich Cherenkov (Russian: Фёдор Фёдорович Черенко́в; 25 July 1959 – 4 October 2014) was a Soviet and Russian football midfielder who played for Spartak Moscow (1977–90 and 1991–94) and Red Star Football Club (1990–91).[1]

In this Eastern Slavic name, the patronymic is Fyodorovich and the family name is Cherenkov.
Fyodor Cherenkov
Cherenkov in 2008
Personal information
Full name Fyodor Fyodorovich Cherenkov
Date of birth (1959-07-25)25 July 1959
Place of birth Moscow, Soviet Union
Date of death 4 October 2014(2014-10-04) (aged 55)
Place of death Moscow, Russia
Height 1.78 m (5 ft 10 in)
Position(s) Midfielder
Youth career
1969–1971 Kuntsevo Moscow
1971–1977 Spartak Moscow
Senior career*
Years Team Apps (Gls)
1977–1990 Spartak Moscow 344 (86)
1990–1991 Red Star Saint-Ouen 15 (1)
1991–1993 Spartak Moscow 54 (9)
Total 413 (96)
National team
1979–1990 Soviet Union 34 (12)
1980–1983 Soviet Union Olympic 10 (6)
Teams managed
1994–1995 Spartak Moscow (assistant)
1996–1997 Spartak Moscow (reserves assistant)
2013–2014 Spartak Moscow (youth assistant)
* Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only

Playing career

Cherenkov made 34 appearances for the Soviet Union national football team, scoring 12 goals.[2] Although widely regarded by Spartak's fans as the team's best player ever, he was always dropped by the national team on the eve of several major tournaments, including two World Cups and a European Championship. For the time spent in Spartak he received the Club Loyalty Award in 1989. He was an incredible passer and was also great at shooting the ball and scored many goals. Cherenkov worked as a coach of Spartak's reserve team after retiring. He was awarded "The Attack Organizer" award in 1988 and 1989, as the most useful attack player.[3] In his history of Spartak, Robert Edelman described him as "the longest-serving and most beloved of all Spartakovtsy":

A native Muscovite, Fiodr Cherenkov (b. 1959) was a product of Spartak's school. Navigating between midfield and forward, he played with an originality and eccentricity that endeared him to the public. Cherenkov was an enigmatic and fragile personality whose capacity for unexpected improvisation fit the Spartak image of the player as romantic artist. A true original, he was the embodiment of what many of Spartak's male Moscow supporters liked to believe about themselves. Lacking great speed but quick on his feet, small of stature but possessed of great guile, Cherenkov seemed to practice a new kind of masculinity, that of the urban trickster. By the time his Spartak career was over, he was the leading point producer (goal plus pass) in the team's history.[4]

Life and personality

A 2021 profile on BBC Sport relates that Cherenkov was a kind and approachable "regular guy" who could not understand his own fame. He suffered several attacks of an unknown mental illness during his playing career, and missed important games because of it, but was "widely seen as the best Soviet footballer of the decade". His daughter Anastasia was born in 1980. He died in 2014, at age 55, after collapsing outside his home. An autopsy at a Moscow hospital found a brain tumour. The profile described him as a "football genius".[5]

Honours

References
  1. "The Soviet genius the world never got to see" – via www.bbc.co.uk.
  2. Matthias Arnhold (19 June 2009). "Fyodor Fyodorovich Cherenkov - International Appearances". Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation. Retrieved 5 October 2014.
  3. ""Организатору атаки"". www.hsf.narod.ru.
  4. Robert Edelman, Spartak Moscow: A History of the People's Team in the Workers' State (Cornell University Press, 2012; ISBN 080146613X), p. 279.
  5. Michael Yokhin (28 January 2021). "Fyodor Cherenkov: The Soviet football genius the world never got to see". BBC Sport.
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