The best football player in the USSR in 1972, Evgeny Lovchev and Vladimir Grigorievich were friends.
“Soviet Sport” asked Yevgeny Serafimovich to remember his friend.
– We were friends with Volodya, but I was Beskov’s son-in-law, so I often visited Konstantin Ivanovich at home when they gathered as a family in an enlarged composition.
And we became friends in 1971, when Valentin Nikolaev led the USSR national team. At the training camp, on a tour of South America, they lived with Volodya in the same room.
I remember a funny anecdote, although I wasn’t laughing then.
I played for Spartak, Volodya recently graduated, but I haven’t coached anyone yet. He built a dacha in Podrezkovo, but I was born in Kryukovo, this is a little further. I knew this area of the Moscow region well. Volodya called: “Zhenya, come to the dacha tomorrow, drink vodka on the way, four bottles, for the builders.”
I left, on the outskirts of Moscow, a small store. I opened four bottles of vodka at the register and went to the counter. I drink vodka. And then a boy from behind: “Uncle Lovchev, give me an autograph.” He hands me a sheet of paper and a pen.
And, luckily, I don’t have a bag or a net. Bottles get in the way, he put one in his trouser pocket, another in his jacket pocket, the third under his arm, he signed. And embarrassed The boy is looking at these bottles. Well, the line did not recognize me, they began to whistle: “Come on, don’t be late.” A bullet flew out of the store and through the gases…
There is a saying “Nature relies on children.” And somehow one of the newspapers published an article in which Volodya was criticized for something. And the title “Fedot, but not the one.”
I was very outraged then, because Volodya was a very good football player. Maybe he was a little below the great father Grigory Ivanovich, but I did not find how Grigory Ivanovich played. But Volodya was certainly not ashamed of his surname: he was the top scorer in the USSR championship, the country’s champion, he played for the national team.
When Volodya died in 2009, I was not in Moscow, but I immediately hurried. The farewell was in the CSKA collective sports hall. I went in, Valeria Nikolaevna Beskova saw me and greeted, they say, come here. And she sat down next to her on a bench near the coffin. And Pavlyuchenko played with Fedotov in Spartak, in 2009 he already played in England. But he flew specially from London to the funeral of his coach. It is expensive.
Volodya was a kind and decent person, for this the players loved him.
