FACTFILE
|
Born: |
22 Oct 1929 |
Dead: |
20 Mar 1990 |
Caps: |
78 |
|
--
WORLD
CUP FACTFILE
|
4th
place
1966
Participated
1958, 1962,
1966
Games/Goals conceded
13/18
'Clean sheets'
4
|
--
|
Lev
Yashin
(Soviet
Union)
Lev Yashin,
famous for always wearing all-black when playing, is arguably the greatest
goalkeeper the world has ever seen. He played 22 seasons for Dinamo Moscow,
the only club he ever represented, winning five league championships and
three cup championships. He made an unprecedented contribution to the game,
setting the modern standards for goalkeeping. Being a great athlete in
addition to all his courage, he was among the first goalkeepers to command
the entire penalty area and did it with unmatched confidence and reliability.
He was equally impressive on the goalline with stunning reflexes and plasticity
which made him nearly flawless. Most notably, he confronted the common
attitude of catching the ball, inventing various ways of simply kicking
it away from the penalty area when required.
Yashin was
the first choice goalkeeper for the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1967. In
that spell he won 78 caps and played in three World Cups 1958, 1962 and
finally 1966, where the Soviet Union reached the semifinal much thanks
to Yashin’s contribution. In 1956 he was a member of the Soviet Union’s
team who won the olympics in Melbourne, and four years later he won the
European championships.
One of the
proudest moments in his career was when he won the “European Player of
the Year” award in 1963. He still remains the only goalkeeper to have won
that prize. He retired 41 years old playing against a team of European
stars in 1971 having kept 270 clean sheets and he is also rumoured to have
saved over 150 penalties in his long career. In 1986 a knee injury led
to an amputation of his leg and only four years later he passed away after
surgery complications.
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