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Oleg Blokhin

Oleh Volodymyrovych Blokhin (born November 5, 1952), is a Ukrainian football coach of mixed Ukrainian (by mother) and Russian (by father) ethnicity who was formerly a striker for the USSR national football team. He was named European Footballer of the Year in 1975.

Career

Blokhin was born in Kiev, the capital of the Ukrainian SSR, in 1955 to a mother of Ukrainian ethnicity and a father of Russian ethnicity. Blokhin's father was a native of Moscow.

Playing

He played during most of his career for Dynamo Kiev, 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. 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 1986 Football World Cups where he scored 1 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.

Coaching

After retiring as a player, Blokhin coached Greek clubs Olympiakos, AEK, PAOK, and Ionikos. He has been serving as the head coach of the Ukrainian national team since September 2003. Under his leadership, Ukraine reached the quarter-finals of 2006 World Cup. There, Ukraine lost to Italy, the 2006 World Champion.

Following the side's failure to reach Euro 2008, Blokhin stepped down as coach on 6 December 2007. On December 14, 2007 he was named head coach of FC Moscow.

Politics

In 2002 Oleh Blokhin was elected to Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine's parliament) for a second term. In October 2002 he joined the United Social Democratic Party of Ukraine. Recently Oleg has showed no political activity, concentrating on his coaching job.

Family

Blokhin was married to Irina Deriugina, the prominent Soviet/Ukrainian gymnast and world champion in free-stand exercise, but the couple divorced in early 1990s. They have a daughter named Irina.

2006 Racial controversy

On February 22, 2006 in an interview (Russian) on the Ukrainian sports website sport.com.ua, Blokhin made the following comment:

The more Ukrainians that play in the national league, the more examples for the young generation. Let them learn from Shevchenko or Blokhin and not from some Zumba-Bumba whom they took off a tree, gave him two bananas and now he plays in the Ukrainian League. [...] I remember when I played football, if we lost a game it was not easy to walk the Kiev streets - there were many friends out there who could beat you up for that. But is there any sense in beating up a foreigner? Okay, you beat him up - next thing he does is pack up and go.

These comments received considerable coverage in Western editorials.