Ruud Doevendans has been an official columnist for a Dutch club and owns one of the largest
collections of soccer videos containing hundreds of World Cup matches. We at PWC are proud to have him as
a columnist. He will share his views about the past, present and future of
the World Cup.
Mail Ruud
Read earlier columns
|
|
|
Dasaev was even better than Yashin
Unfortunately, I have never been able to see the likes of James Trainer,
Ricardo Zamora and Frantisek Planicka. Or Andres Mazali, Giampiero Combi and
Just Göbel, to name a few more. Great goalkeepers before television brought
soccer into our homes. When it comes to naming the best goalies ever, I have
to limit myself to “modern” times. The ten best that I’ve seen are,
alphabetically ordered:
Luis Miguel Arconada
Gordon Banks
Jan van Beveren
Rinat Dasaev
Ladislao Mazurkiewicz
Christian Piot
Peter Schmeichel
Ivo Viktor
Lev Yashin
Dino Zoff
Some of them (Arconada) for their fabulous style, others (Van Beveren) for
their style and reflexes, for their composure under all circumstances (Banks
and Zoff), their overall abilities (Mazurkiewicz, Yashin and Dasaev),
braveness (Piot and Viktor) or power (Schmeichel). Many countries have
produced their own talents between the posts, but no other country has had
two such extremely talented shotstoppers as the Sovietunion. I am sure that
I am not the only person to rank Dasaev and Yashin among the best of all
time. The question that remains is: who was the better of the two. It’s like
comparing two almost uniovular twins. Both tall, with magnificent reflexes,
good on and off the line and although looking a little sticky, very
flexible. They were the backbone of their clubteams and national teams for a
long spell of years.
What we see is that players seem to get better the longer they are not
playing anymore. We tend to remember their good moments and forget their
bad. I have the same problem. Look at my list of favourite goalkeepers: no
Kahn, no Buffon, no Chilavert or Van der Sar. I honestly think that the ten
I mention above were better. But sometimes we overstate those things. And I
think that is what we see when we consider players like Yashin. Even today,
people who haven’t seen the great Russian play a single minute, usually say:
Yashin was the best ever. Why? Because they have heard it from so many other
people, who haven’t seen Yashin themselves either, but say so because so
many before them did the same. Yashin is a pure legend. They had never seen
a goalkeeper like him before. In the first place, because he was very good,
and in the second place because they had never seen soccer on television
before. But it's true, he revolutionized goalkeeping by coming off his line
more than any predecessor.
I have six games on video in which Yashin plays,
mainly World Cup 1966 games. And I must say, he was a maestro. A really
impressing goalkeeper, with no weaknesses it seems. But the best ever? There
were plenty of moments when Yashin stole the show, but he wasn’t always
great. Especially during the World Cups in 1958 and 1962, he couldn’t fulfil
the expectations. Against Chile in 1962, he gave up a silly goal that led to
the Sovietunion’s elimination. Yashin surely must have been the best of the
late 50’s and early 60’s, no doubt about that. What helped was, that he
played in the period that soccer started to reach many people through
television. Nobody could compare him to the great of earlier days. But then
again, the best ever? I don’t know.
I may not have seen the very best of Lev Yashin, but I have seen Rinat
Dasaev in his glory days, 1982-1988. In that period Dasaev was an unmatched
goalkeeper, despite the great qualities of Harald Schumacher, Luis Miguel
Arconada and Jean-Marie Pfaff. He was superb during the World Cup 1982, and
his save on a Joe Jordan header will be remembered as one of the best saves
ever made in a World Cup. Surely equal to Banks’ save against Pelé in 1970.
And the USSR may not have gotten very far in the World Cup 1986 (and many
may say that Pfaff was the goalkeeping hero of that tournament), for me
Dasaev even then was the best, playing brilliantly against France before he
was beaten by four unstoppable shots from Belgium. It took something really
special to beat Dasaev. Goals scored against him were mostly beautiful
goals.
During Euro 88 he was the best again, when Holland couldn’t beat a
fantastic Dasaev in their groupmatch in Cologne, and neither could Italy in
the semis when the Russian muslim - he had the Koran with him in every game
he played - stopped a short-range header from Giannini to keep the score 0-0
at half-time. I was in the stadium both times, and he was sensational. The
final of that tournament was his last as the best goalkeeper of the world.
He moved to Seville and we never saw the old Dasaev again. He was omitted
from the national side after playing just one game in the World Cup 1990.
Shortly after that humiliation, Dasaev quit the game.
It proves that even those who rank among the best goalkeepers ever, had
their weak moments. If I had to make the choice for the best Soviet-goalie,
my vote would go to Dasaev. A 51/49 score, I must admit. In the games I saw
from him, Lev Yashin couldn’t convince me of being better than Rinat Dasaev.
And we should realize that the Dasaev-period was much more difficult for
goalkeepers than the period in which Yashin played. I think that Dasaev, with
his qualities of the 80’s, playing in the 50’s and 60’s, would have been
considered as the best ever. His legend would have been
Yashin-like. He would, together with hockey-goaltender Vladislav Tretiak,
have been the great ambassador of Soviet-sport. So quick, so agile, so
unbeatable when at his best. On the other hand, if Yashin had played in
the 80’s, he would have been remembered as a very good goalie, the way most
people see Dasaev now. The longer they have retired, you know......
|
[HOME]
BACKGROUND
Info on how
the World Cup was founded and about the trophy as well. |
THE
WORLD CUPS
Detailed info
on every match in every tournament. |
COLUMNISTS
Interesting columns about the past, present and future of the World Cup. |
THE
NATIONS
Every nation
with appearances in the World Cup. Detailed info on every country. |
LEGENDS
Player profiles
of many of the most influential players in history. |
A-Z STORIES
An A-Z collection
of strange and different stories in World Cup history. |
STATISTICS
A big collection
of various statistics and records. |
MASCOTS
Every mascot
since it was introduced in 1966. |
QUIZ
Test your
knowledge about the WC. Three different levels. No prizes, just for fun. |
TOP
10 RANKINGS
Rankings of
lots of stuff. For instance Best Goals, Best Players and Best Matches. |
LINKS
Our collection
of links to other soccer sites with World Cup connection. |
LINK
TO
Some banners
and buttons for you to link to us if you want. |
ABOUT
US
A little information
on who keeps this site available. |
|
