The first part of our story was dedicated to Sergey Morozov, Eduard Malofeev and Viktor Prokopenko (they made their debut in the RPL in 1992-1994):
In the second part we talk about Benyaminas Zelkevichus, David Kipiani and Pavel Yakovenko (RPL debut 1997-1999):
In the third part, the time has come for the first foreigner from abroad, Boris Bunyak, as well as Evgeny Kucherevsky and Vladimir Muntyan (1999-2002):
The quarter of foreign mercenaries (Revaz Dzodzuashvili, Vlastimil Petrzhela, Sergei Aleinikov):
And the fifth, the most memorable (Arthur Jorge, Nevio Scala, Roland Courbis):
Another trio of foreigners who arrived in Russia in 2004 (Yaroslav Grzhebik, Alexander Starkov, Edgar Hess):
YITCHAK SHUMM, Israel – 11 games: 1-4-6 (0.64 ppg)
Club: Alania
Achievements: –
Years in Russia: 2005
Another mercenary, designed to save the dying Alania, but didn’t even make it to the end of the season. However, he did not create terrible problems in the Vladikavkaz club, in which as many as seven (!) Coaches worked in 2004-2005: Kurbis, Dragan Cvetkovich, Yuri Sekinaev, Bakhva Tedeev, Hess, Shum and Igor Yanovsky. What’s more, according to the scoring schedule, the Israeli wasn’t even the worst.
Shum started coaching in the 1980s, in the 1990s he helped the head coaches in the first Israeli national team and at the same time managed the youth team, and in the early 2000s he achieved his first recognition – with Maccabi , Haifa insultingly took second place tied on points with Tel Aviv’s namesakes and scored a golden double with Panathinaikos. In the next 18 years, the 20-time Greek champion won gold just once.
So, Shum’s reputation was quite decent, and knowledge of the Russian language (born in Chisinau) was considered a significant advantage. Thanks to him, Shum became friends with Valery Gazzaev, then the CSKA coach, and suggested a friend to Vladikavkaz. “I am a friend of Gazzaev. Recently, it often happened that during the training camp we stayed in the same hotel. From his words, I learned about Alania. And when I received an offer from the leadership of the Vladikavkaz club, I gladly accepted it,” said the coach himself.
The noise was waiting to get louder. They say that even one of the clauses of his contract referred to this. In fact, several players were taken, but only Ruslan Pimenov, rented from Lokomotiv, stood out among them. In the first five rounds, Alania lost only to the ensuing Zenit, and a rather comical episode is connected with this. The mentor of St. Petersburg, Vlastimil Petrzhela, after the game called Shum … “a kike.” The scandal was averted only because the Czech word “boy” (zid) means “Jew.”
At the end of August, emotions in the team dried up, they suffered four defeats in a row (including 1:5 from Spartak), and Shum was fired. But in Israel, she held her own. She worked at Hapoel Tel Aviv, and with Beitar in 2008 she won the championship and the Israel Cup (and could even replace Otto Rehagel at the helm of the Greek team). True, this is the last success of his as a coach. In 2017, he became president of Hapoel Kfar Saba, his home club, where he spent 17 years as a midfielder (455 appearances, 71 goals), now a classic for the rise team between the top two divisions of the country. Noise, 74, holds this position to this day.
IVO WORTMAN, Brazil – 13 games: 4-1-8 (1.00 ppg)
Clubs: Dynamo
Achievements: –
Years in Russia: 2005
One of the tour scammer trainers that cunning agents push to foolish owners. Wortman was a mediocre footballer and became an absolutely mediocre coach who replaced 38 (!!!) teams from 1980 to 2016, of which Dynamo ranked 29th. And judging by the transfermarkt statistics, as a leader, not counting six games with the Saudi Arabia youth team, he never scored more than 1.24 points per game.
Wortman is not so much a coach as a traveler. His resume includes teams from Brazil, Qatar (and this is from the 1980s!), the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Russia and China. It seems that he resigned in 2010, and after Brasiliense he remained inactive for four years, and then asked Gremio as an assistant to his friend Luis Felipe Scolari, with whom he later went to Evergrande for another two years.
Scolari, who worked in 2005 as head coach of the Portuguese team, advised Wortman to go blue and white. It was precisely in that very brief period that businessman Aleksey Fedorychev intended to turn Dynamo into a top-flight European club and sent a check whereby the managers bought two packs of Portuguese foreign stars from Derlei and Danny to Maniche and Costinha. And they assigned the Brazilian coach Wortman.
It was under him that Dynamo became the first Russian team, on the basis of which 11 foreigners entered the field, which ultimately gave rise to the cap hated by all the right people. Meanwhile, thoughtless investments did not help, but rather killed the team, divided into Russians and foreigners, demoralized by the low level of the championship, the infrastructure and the organization of the club. Naturally, in such an environment, there could be no doubt about any outcome. Before Wortman, even Oleg Romantsev could not cope. The Brazilian, on the other hand, lasted three and a half months, and after three straight losses, he was fired.
But it is unlikely that it had enough competition for more favorable conditions. It is no coincidence that even as one of the coaches, he quickly lost his job: at Fluminense he lasted two months, at Juventud and Curitiba, four each. The 73-year-old man has been enjoying his retirement since 2017. And this despite the fact that Scolari (a year older than his friend) practically did not stop his activities.
SLAVOLJUB MUSLIN, Serbia – 129 games: 48-32-49 (136 ppg)
Clubs: Lokomotiv, Khimki, Krasnodar, Amkar
Achievements: –
Years in Russia: 2006, 2007-2008, 2011-2014
These are some of the foreigners who really made their own in Russia. Muslin is in the top 5 of foreign specialists in terms of number of points scored (176) while fourth in terms of number of games (129). True, impressions of his work remained ambiguous.
The Serbian specialist, when he was a player, was the star of the Red Star Star (more than 300 games), and finished his career in France (Lille, Brest, Caen), where he trained the first ten years (and even in Bordeaux, where he worked then Zinedine Zidane himself). Then came the time for trips abroad and the first successes: gold in the Moroccan championship with Raja, two championship titles in Yugoslavia with Red Star, a double gold in Bulgaria with Levski and a very worthy stage in Metallurg. Donetsk (1.86 points). party) met in six years.
In general, a worthy successor to Yuri Semin, who never returned to the team after leaving for the Russian national team. The former employer was replaced, and then betrayed, not allowed to return, by his long-term assistant Vladimir Eshtrekov, but he himself was unable to direct and was fired. The players noted the scientific approach and the European style of work in Muslin’s work.
At first, the railway workers got a little stuck: exit from the UEFA Cup for Sevilla and the Russian Cup for Spartak, and the first victory in the RPL was won only in the fifth round, at the end of the match with the CSKA. , Branislav Ivanovich pushed the ball into the net. But then an 18-match unbeaten streak followed, thanks to which Loko rose to first place! And he could claim the championship.
But at the end of September-October, a strange thing happened: 0: 1 from semi-amateur Zulte-Waregem in the UEFA Cup and Moscow in the championship and an unexpected resignation … They say that the head of the club Valery Filatov interfered in the coach’s work and at the suggestion of the chairman of the board of directors, Sergei Lipatova, was waiting for the moment to fire him. Ironically, a couple of months later, Lipatov fired Filatov himself – the man who, together with Semin, made the “Lokomotiv” known in Europe with the fifth wheel of Moscow clubs.
A month later, Muslin led Lokeren, from where he was taken out to Moscow, but not with such success, and in the fall of 2007 an offer came from Khimki. Muslin accepted this for some reason and was very sorry: having won four matches out of 12, he was fired five rounds after the start of the 2008 season, although he gave Spartak an impressive 3:3, which escaped in the 92nd minute.
And three years later, Sergei Galitsky entrusted the coach to lead Krasnodar, which had just entered the Premier League. It was under Muslin that the “bulls” immediately entrenched themselves in the center of the table and generally showed themselves to be very dignified, showing solid attacking football (goal difference 114-114 in 83 matches).
In February 2012, Galitsky wrote on social networks that he would like to stay with the coach “for many years”, and only a year and a half later he resigned, moreover, after losing on the fourth day against… Lokomotiv. They say that the owner suspected dirt in the coach’s actions and since then has hardly appointed experienced coaches in the RPL: Oleg Kononov, Daniel Farke and Vladimir Ivic came from abroad, and Igor Shalimov, Murad Musaev and Alexander Storozhuk developed. in the club system. The only exception was Viktor Goncharenko.
Subsequently, Muslin coached in Belgium and Saudi Arabia, and also managed the Serbian national team, with which he qualified for the 2018 World Cup from the group with Ireland, Wales and Austria, but quite unexpectedly, immediately after the selection, terminated the contract. with the federation by mutual agreement and did not reach Russia. They say it was because he did not trust Sergei Milinkovich-Savic. Now Muslin is 69 years old and since 2019 he has been unemployed.
