- Born
- Died
- Birth nameLev Ivanovich Yashin
- Nicknames
- Black Spider
- Black Panther
- Black Octopus
- Height6′ 2½″ (1.89 m)
- Lev Yashin is a Soviet football player (goalkeeper), who played for Dynamo Moscow and Soviet Union National Football Team. Olympic champion in 1956 and European champion in 1960, 5-time champion of the USSR, Honored Master of Sports of the USSR (1957). Hero of Socialist Labor (1990), colonel.
Lev Yashin was born in Moscow, in the Bogorodskoye area. In the courtyard of the house, local children, including Yashin, constantly played football, games continued in the spring, summer and autumn, in any weather, in the dark. In these yard games, Yashin received the first goalkeeper experience.
The beginning of the Great Patriotic War found the 11-year-old Lyova near Podolsk - with relatives, to whom his parents sent their son for a summer vacation. Yashin celebrated his twelfth birthday by unloading a train with factory machines. He went to work at this plant, becoming the apprentice locksmith in the spring of 1943. At the age of 16, Lev Yashin received the first award - the medal 'For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945'. Lev, while continuing to work at the factory, devoted all his free time to his favorite game, playing as a goalkeeper for the Tushin national team.
At 18, he was drafted into the army. He served in Moscow, and there he was noticed by the coach of Dynamo Moscow Arkadiy Chernyshyov, who invited him to the club's youth team. Since then, Yashin played only for this club, until the end of his football career in 1971. Together with his club, Yashin five times (1954, 1955, 1957, 1959 and 1963) became the champion of the USSR and three times won the USSR Cup in football.
Since 1954, Lev Yashin is the goalkeeper of the Soviet Union National Football Team, for which he played 74 matches. Together with the national team in 1956, Yashin won the Melbourne 1956: Games of the XVI Olympiad (1956), the 1960 European Cup. As part of the national team, he played three times in the final stage of the World Cup: in 1958 in Sweden, in 1962 in Chile and in 1966 in England. The highest achievement in the world championships was fourth place in the 1966.
After the completion of his football career, Yashin graduated from the school of trainers. He worked as a coach of the second national team of the USSR and, for some time, of children's teams.
- IMDb mini biography by: Bazza the Beast
- Always wore black when playing
- Russian football player, one of the best goalkeepers ever.
- He is the only goalkeeper ever to win the European Footballer of the Year Award (1963). He is also believed to have blocked around 150 penalty kicks during his career; far more than any other goalkeeper in history.
- Is maybe the most nicknamed goalkeeper in football history: when he was only seven years old, his classmates used to name him "Eiffel Tower".
- In 2019, France Football magazine awarded a prize to the best goalkeeper "Yachine Trophy" in honor of Lev Yashin.
- The new stadium of Dynamo Moscow is called VTB Arena - The Dynamo Central Stadium named after Lev Yashin.
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