Oleg Blokhin

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Olympic medal record
Men’s Football
Bronze	1972 Munich	Team competition
Bronze	1976 Montreal	Team competition

Personal information
Oleg Blokhin
Full name	Oleg Blokhin
Date of birth	November 5, 1952
Place of birth	Kyiv, Ukraine
Height	180 cm
Position	Forward
Club information
Current club	Ukraine
Youth clubs
1962-1969	Dynamo Kyiv
Professional clubs*
Years	Club	Apps (goals)
1969-1988 1988-1989 1989-1990	Dynamo Kyiv Vorwärts Steyr Aris Limassol	433 (211) 41 (9) 22 (5)
National team
1972-1988	USSR	112 (42)
Teams managed
1990-1993 1993-1994 1994-1997 1997-1998 1998-1999 1999-2002 2003-	Olympiakos Piraeus PAOK Saloniki Ionikos PAOK Saloniki AEK Athens Ionikos Ukraine
* Professional club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only.

Oleh Volodymyrovych Blokhin (born November 5, 1952 in Kiev, Soviet Union, now Ukraine), is a Ukrainian soccer coach who was formerly a striker for the USSR national football team. He was named European Footballer of the Year in 1975.

A former Dynamo Kiev player, Blokhin is 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 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. He was one of the first Soviet players to play abroad, signing for Austria's Vorwärts Steyr in 1988, he also played in Greece with Aris.

After retiring as a player, Blokhin coached Greek clubs Olympiakos, 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.

In 2002 Oleg 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.

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.

In November 2003, to celebrate UEFA's Jubilee, he was selected as the Golden Player of Ukraine by the Football Federation of Ukraine as their most outstanding player of the past 50 years.^[1]

[edit] 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.^[2]^[3]^[4]

[edit] Notes

^ UEFA.com's annoucement
^ The soccer Nazis' losing battle by Tony Karon, Los Angeles Times, June 9, 2006
^ Setting the scene by Jen Chang, ESPNsoccernet, June 8, 2006
^ Daily Record January,2006

[edit] External links

UEFA.com - Ukraine's Golden Player

Preceded by: Johan Cruyff	European Footballer of the Year 1975	Succeeded by: Franz Beckenbauer

	USSR squad - 1986 World Cup
1 Dasaev \| 2 Bessonov \| 3 Chivadze \| 4 Morozov \| 5 Demyanenko \| 6 Bubnov \| 7 Yaremchuk \| 8 Yakovenko \| 9 Zavarov \| 10 Kuznetsov \| 11 Blokhin \| 12 Bal \| 13 Litovchenko \| 14 Rodionov \| 15 Larionov \| 16 Chanov \| 17 Yevtushenko \| 18 Protasov \| 19 Belanov \| 20 Aleinikov \| 21 Rats \| 22 Krakovsky \| Coach: Lobanovsky

	Ukraine squad - 2006 FIFA World Cup Quarter-finalists
1 Shovkovsky \| 2 Nesmachniy \| 3 Yatsenko \| 4 Tymoschuk \| 5 Yezerskiy \| 6 Rusol \| 7 Shevchenko \| 8 Shelayev \| 9 Husyev \| 10 Voronin \| 11 Rebrov \| 12 Pyatov \| 13 Chygrynskyy \| 14 Husin \| 15 Milevsky \| 16 Vorobei \| 17 Vashchuk \| 18 Nazarenko \| 19 Kalynychenko \| 20 Byelik \| 21 Rotan \| 22 Sviderskiy \| 23 Shust \| Coach: Blokhin