ANDRIY BIBA: “I gave Pele two ten ruble notes, which he autographed”
“Mr. Biba, professional soccer players now earn solid money that you could not even have dreamed of, although many well-known players of your generation treated soccer very seriously and sometimes even spent more time training than some do today.”
“In the mid-fifties, when youth soccer schools appeared in Kyiv, I was trained in Iskra (Spark, named for a pre-Revolutionary Bolshevik newspaper —Ed.), a children’s team, by Volodymyr Balakin, brother of the referee then famous on the all-Union scale, Mykola Balakin. And I, as I see it a talented boy, was invited to one of the youth soccer schools, where the best pupils were awarded small grants of money. So yours truly, when still a boy, began to earn a living playing soccer.
“There were always people in the Soviet Union who earned money in sports, but they were called not professionals as they are now but dubbed with the tender word, snowdrop, and registered at various enterprises as metalworkers, builders, or cleaners. I, too, never stood at a crossroads with a police baton in hand.
“I will only note that we worked very honestly for the salaries we were paid, and we never just marked time. I think it is for this reason that Oleh Oshenkov, head coach of the Dynamo adult team, invited me in 1957 together with Valentyn Troyanovsky and Oleh Bazylevych. Forty years ago I made my first-string debut, playing against Leningrad Zenith, where I also opened the account of my goals.”
“Old-time fans remember very well your long-distance cannonballs.”
“Yes, I used to hit home such goals that it pleases me even now to recall them. Take, for example, the goal in the match against Moscow Dynamo in 1965. The game was stubborn, with zeros on the display board. And then the judge awards us a free kick about forty meters away from Lev Yashin’s goal. The Muscovites’ captain and their best forward Igor Chislenko hastily lined up a wall. I say to him with pretended surprise: ‘What for, Igor? Do you think I’ll shoot as far as your goal?’ To which he replied angrily: ‘We know your tricks, Andriy,’ so Lev told the fullbacks to put up a wall. Well, I ran up from almost the pitch center and made such a cool shot that the ball flew past the wall by an unthinkable trajectory and hit right in the middle of the net.”
“Goals are, of course, memorable landmarks. But which soccer season do you remember most?”
“There were several. Above all, the 1961 season, when we became champions for the first time. A team was born in Kyiv, capable of trouncing the Moscow clubs of Spartak, Dynamo, Torpedo, CSKA, and Lokomotiv on more than one occasion. Also on my mind was the USSR Championship and Cup Tournament in 1966, when Dynamo made, for the first time, the golden double. Then, in the final Cup tie, Anatoly Byshovets and I scored one goal each against Moscow Torpedo, and I as captain lifted up the trophy. I was also the first non-Moscow soccer player to be named the best player of the year at the end of the season. I am aware that this was only possible because I played on a fantastic team.”
“They say that Dynamo coach Viktor Maslov was a very cheerful person and dared to play tricks for which other people would have been dressed down?”
“I remember visiting Egypt with the old man. We, the whole team, were sitting, having dinner and relaxing, and there are some two old ladies at a nearby table. It is an open secret that in those times the team was always accompanied by a KGB officer. So the KGB man came up to Maslov and said, ‘You know, I don’t like those two old bags. Let’s do like this: I will go down that bridge (and the bridge was as long as could be) and you will see what they will be doing, watching me.’ And he went. He walked as long as he could along the bridge, then came back and asked, ‘Well, what were they doing here?’ But Maslov had already forgotten his request, so blurted out, ‘When you had gone, the one on the left shoved the fork, instead of an antenna, into her... and began to radio something very fast. Must be CIA.’”
“And your meeting with the legendary Pele.”
“I belong to those who are one hundred percent sure nobody can match the king of soccer, Pele: neither the Portuguese Eusebio, nor the Argentine Maradona, nor the Brazilians Romario and Ronaldo. Only he was irreproachable in everything. So I, as part of the Olympic team, happened to take on Pele’s team, Santos. We even opened the score in the first half after a smart shot by Valery Lobanovsky, but the Brazilians soon equalized the score, and in the 83rd minute the king headed the victorious goal for Santos.
“A year later, in 1965, I met again the legendary player in the match between the national teams of the USSR and Brazil, where we lost 0:3. At the banquet in the Metropol Hotel, I sat right opposite Pele, so I asked him for his autograph, as a souvenir, on two brand new ten ruble bills (this was all I had about me). Unfortunately, I don’t have them now. I lost one bill the same day, when Viktor Bannikov and I were flying on a plane from Moscow, and we were recognized by a Georgian, a soccer fan. Why the hell did I show him those Pele-signed ten ruble bills? Throughout the flight he would ask me to sell him one bill for any money. Finally, I gave it to him. Then I presented the second bill to Volodymyr Muntean. We were friends and once even shared one salary in Kyiv Dynamo Kyiv as ‘much’ as 110 rubles for two.”
“Today, you work for Kyiv Dynamo as scouting coach. You started in this post when Viktor Maslov was still head coach. To reinforce the team, you brought Leonid Buriak from Odesa, Serhiy Dotsenko from Tashkent, and Vitaly Shevchenko from Baku. But the most notorious was the so-called Kolotov affair, after which Komsomolskaya pravda poured forth a stream of exposures of Dynamo’s machinations, featuring you, of course. ”
“Unfortunately, Volodymyr Kolotov, later on Dynamo team captain, has already passed away. But at the time, he was a young player from the Kazan-based Rubin, a second-division team, but had made his debut in the USSR first (!) national team and was being hunted for by all the Moscow clubs. But I, together with Oleksiy Rubanov, an executive at the Kyiv city council of the Dynamo Sports Association, managed to drop in at the provincial town of Zelenodolsk near Kazan, where Viktor lived with his parents in a rundown house and convert Kolotov into the Dynamo faith after a drawn-out conversation. Then I looked suddenly out the window and saw in the yard a Moscow guest, my old Torpedo rival and now also, like me, a scout, Vladimir Brednev. Viktor’s parents hid me behind the partition wall and introduced Rubanov as an uncle from Magadan. I heard very well Brednev talking and jingling the keys for a two- room apartment in Moscow. Then Kolotov the father asked Rubanov what he would advise his nephew. And Uncle Liosha immediately played the role and said: ‘Well, son, you’d better go to Kyiv: a nice city, a good climate, the Dnipro River, and Moscow is a crazy city. Everybody is running about and hurrying somewhere.’”
“But this is not the end of the detective story, is it?”
“That was only the beginning. Viktor went abroad as part of the national team, while his parents and brother moved over to Kyiv and settled in a new apartment. When the team came back to Moscow, it was met by the Torpedo people unaware of all this, mother, brother, and ‘Uncle Liosha from Magadan.’ They quietly packed all their things in the hostel where they all were supposed to stay the night and rushed to Kyiv. And as soon as the next morning, at 10 a.m., internal security forces serviceman Viktor Kolotov was sworn in. Then began the visits of Moscow bigwigs to Ukraine, district military commissars were dismissed in Kazan and Kyiv, while the Moscow press slung as much mud as it could on the Kyiv ‘soccer swindlers.’ However, when the Dynamo with Kolotov as team captain won the Cup Winners’ Cup and the UEFA Supercup in 1975, the same publications, bubbled over with delight, writing that Kolotov and his partners had become the pride of the whole country.”
“Mr. Biba, you continue to work for your beloved team: you travel around and scrutinize players, you know what they breathe, their strong and weak points. For instance, the Georgian forward Georgy Demetradze has now put on a Dynamo jersey. What can you say about him? For we have not seen three Dynamo forwards on the pitch simultaneously for a long time.”
“It’s an interesting trio indeed: fast Maksym Shatskykh, Demetradze who can outplay a fullback on his own, and the crafty and wise Serhiy Rebrov. I see the outlines of a formidable spear. Of course, the rookie at first found it difficult to adapt to the Dynamo workload. But now he seems to have found his bearings and gained strength, he even scores goals in training matches.”
“And what will happen to the national team? Who will head it?”
“Valery Lobanovsky is the best choice if he does not have problems with his health. Everything will be decided at the Executive Committee meeting to be held early next week.”
