All geniuses in world history cannot do without oddities in everyday behavior, but all this is hidden behind a screen of enthusiasm and applause, and comes to light only when the master retires from big football. After the end of his career in the press, details of the life of a man who was applauded by the stadiums appear in the press. It was this tragedy that happened to the legend of Spartak Moscow Fyodor Cherenkov.
Fedor Cherenkov spent his entire career, with the exception of a short stint in France, in his native Spartak. And it all started with the scandalous relegation of one of the clubs with the most titles in the country to the first allied league. It was then, in 1977, that the team passed into the hands of the sworn player of Dynamo Konstantin Beskov, who in a couple of years made a withered and scandalous team the champion of the USSR. It was at that time that such players as Rinat Dasaev, Vagiz Khidiyatullin, Oleg Romantsev and, of course, Fedor Cherenkov shone in the capital club.
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Beskov, regardless of his past at Dinamo, built the rojiblancos’ game through showy and lace-like football, which was mainly guided by the idea and the game of the short pass. Everything the Dutch were famous for in those years with their total football. Controlled chaos, when the opponent’s defenders are completely unaware of how the attack will develop in the next second, and the line of attack, like a fan, disintegrates across the entire width of the field, making it impossible to unravel the plans and layouts of the upcoming offensive. With such a game, the Spartak players baffled almost everyone, even the most reinforced concrete defenses of their opponents, including the incredibly mentally and physically prepared Dynamo kyiv.
Fedor Cherenkov was the link between defense and attack, his duties included breaking up passes to paralyze the opponent’s defense, which he performed with great success on the field, not disdaining to score goals. Yes, even what! A true master cannot have everything like that. Most of Cherenkov’s goals are a fancy finish to a multi-move combination. Well, he couldn’t have done it any other way, because in his mind football was like theater: no falsehoods, no serving a number on the field, no trying to catch a break.
It would seem that with such talents, a football player will certainly play the first violin of the national ensemble, but for every brilliant action in a career there is something that will be a counterattack. For a long time, information about Fedor’s health was withheld from the general public. Cherenkov periodically had nervous breakdowns and night hallucinations. The fact that the star of “Spartak” was undergoing rehabilitation in a psychiatric hospital, people even found out after the end of his career. Due to the fact that the magician Spartak was very upset by Beskov’s defeats and criticism, he was severely mentally overworked. And in 1984, doctors diagnosed a 25-year-old player with a mental disorder, which since then has periodically worsened, especially in the spring and autumn periods.
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For the first time, the disease clearly manifested itself before the match with the Belgian Anderlecht in Tbilisi. Cherenkov suffered a nervous breakdown, as a result of which a strange persecution mania appeared. It always seemed to Fedor that someone wanted to poison him, so he completely refused to eat in cafes and restaurants. Due to this whole situation, he was constantly nervous, he could not relax. There were rumors that the Spartak leader tried to commit suicide. Years later, Fedor’s relatives will tell that the doctors then neglected the symptoms of a progressive disease.
It was these problems that caused Cherenkov to be ignored by the head coach of the USSR national team Valery Lobanovsky. At the same time, in the mid-1980s, the opinion was promoted that Valery Vasilievich did not bring Fedor to his team solely because of his playing style. Dynamo Kiev, whose head coach was the national team, professed a different kind of football, based on strict actions on each line and long passes that sent forwards forward, thus creating a speed advantage up front. Cherenkov missed the 1984 and 1988 European Championships and also missed the 1986 World Championships. This further affected his mental and psychological state.
The disease progressed, and during the acute phases, Fedor Cherenkov went to the hospital, but the treatment had a short-term effect, after a short time everything returned. Because of this, the football player was often depressed, on the verge of depression, from which even medicines could not save him. Cherenkov was repeatedly treated by the best specialists in the country, but they could not help him fight the scourge.
On September 22, 2014, Fedor Cherenkov fell ill and lost consciousness in his own entrance. The legend of “Spartak” was brought to one of the capital’s hospitals, where doctors diagnosed severe hypotension, but the cause of such a diagnosis could not be found. Doctors fought for the life of a footballer for almost two weeks, but unfortunately, they failed to save him.
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Fedor Fedorovich was about 55 years old. The experts agreed that the reason for the serious deterioration of his condition, which led to his death, was a brain tumor. Tens of thousands of people attended the funeral. Cherenkov was buried at the Troekurovsky cemetery in Moscow. In October 2015, a monument to the real Spartak player was erected near the Otkritie Arena, and the southern stand of the stadium is now named after him. In the summer of 2020, after long frictions and scandals, a monument to Fyodor Cherenkov was finally erected at the cemetery.
