To the 54th anniversary of Oleg Romanovich Luzhny.
Oleg LuzhnyHe is the real personification of the Dynamo game, one of the symbols of our club. The "iron" captain of Lobanovsky's third great team, one of those who made independent Ukraine believe that international success is possible, real and even inevitable. Having given Dynamo the best decade of his life as a football player, Oleg Luzhny, at a respectable age for a player, gathered a good harvest of British trophies and awards, returning home with the necessary luggage for the coach. On the occasion of the birthday of the outstanding Dynamo player, we recall his bright sports career.
Oleg Luzhny was born on August 5, 1968 in Lviv. Although the parents had nothing to do with sports, personally, mother Olga Andreevna brought the little football player to the Karpaty specialized sports school in 1976. Yuri Gdansky and Yuri Dyachuk-Stavitsky, the first coaches of the future collection, immediately noticed in him excellent physical data and leadership inclinations. Since 1984, Oleg has been studying at the Lviv Sports Boarding School with Yaroslav Lutsishin and Lev Brovarsky. Luzhny was fond of playing the French collection Amoros - in many ways, by the way, he looked like his favorite ...
However, such an irony of fate, the native Karpaty were in no hurry to pick up a pupil of local football, and Lutsk Torpedo found its way here in a timely manner, which, thanks to a good knowledge of Western Ukrainian football, always intercepted original football players from Galicia to Volyn. So it happened with Luzhny, Vitaliy Kvartsyany testifies: “Luzhny was not needed by the Karpaty and trained together with Tolochko with Dyachuk-Stavitsky in a sports boarding school, but Markevich brought him to Lutsk so that Oleg entered our pedagogical institute. Luzhny really wanted to train, but at first he did not look very promising. However, over time, Oleg became a better and better player. Little by little I progressed and became what we now know.” "Torpedo" brilliantly combined the useful with the pleasant - after all, at that time there was a limit that required teams of masters to give game practice to young players. For Luzhny, this became a springboard for real recognition.
For three and a half seasons in 1985-88, Luzhny played 88 matches (1 goal) for the Lutsk team, and when it was the turn of the army, he was called up to SKA-Karpaty of his native Lviv. The army team led by Istvan Sekech was a strong team of the Allied First League, but the transition to a higher level was good for Oleg, and he played 29 matches. At that time, the athletic young player was already actively paying attention: “Luzhny is distinguished by a high level of functional training, he is especially strong in martial arts and tackling the ball. Often connects to attacks, knows how to make a sharp diagonal pass.
Dynamo "Hermes" Mikhail Koman in 1988 attended the match SKA (Lviv) - SKA (Rostov-on-Don). He returned with a "catch" - in one team he noticed Oleg Luzhny, in the other - Oleg Matveev. Of course, both were in development for a long time, and eventually became Dynamo players. “When, after the fight, Coman came up and offered: “If you want to play in Kyiv, come on, get ready,” I agreed - this happens only once in a lifetime!”
“To what happened to me then, I can pick up only one word - a fairy tale,” Oleg Romanovich later recalled in an interview. - Departing from Karpaty to Dynamo, to be honest, I had no Napoleonic plans, especially since they first called me for a double. And I wouldn’t say that I looked better than others there, but after a week or two I was training with Protasov, Mikhailichenko, Demyanenko and their partners in the main team. And the championship began - and from the very first match, the right edge in Dynamo was firmly entrenched in me. Kyiv teammates quickly accepted the friendly Galician, the authoritative Bessonov from Litovchenko took patronage over the newcomer. And one of the Dynamo wits (there is a version - Bal) awarded Oleg with the nickname "Briegel" - in honor of a German star with a similar set of football virtues.
In the USSR championships, the young defender managed to play 82 matches - he received a gold medal in 1990 and a bronze medal in 1989, as well as the USSR Cup in 1990. No. 3 was on the "33 best" lists in 1989 and 1991. As part of the USSR youth team, Luzhny became the 1990 European champion among peers. Moreover, Valery Lobanovsky rated the debutant so highly that already on April 26, 1989, in the USSR-GDR match, Luzhny made his debut in the USSR national team. When I first heard about the challenge, I laughed a lot, only after the announcement of the list of collections did I believe that this was possible. In total, he managed to play 8 matches for the national team of the Soviet Union. He was considered as one of the main candidates to strengthen the defense of the USSR national team for the 1990 World Cup, but received an injury that required knee surgery - unfortunately, he did not play at the World Cup.
But, being a patriot of Ukraine, the main team in the life of Luzhny was the one that began its chronicle in 1992. He made his debut in the national team of Ukraine on April 28, 1992 in a friendly game against Hungary (1: 3), and played the last game on September 10, 2003 - against Spain in an unsuccessful qualification for the 2004 European Championship (the opponents won at home - 2: 1 ). In 52 matches for the national team, Oleg scored 5 assists and led the Blue-and-Yellows on the field with the captain's armband 39 times. There is a great historical injustice in this, the brilliant team of the 90s has never visited major world and continental forums. However, they were the pioneers on which the future - more successful and successful - generations of collections were equal and grew.
In 1989-99, Oleg Luzhny played a total of 348 matches for Dynamo (Kyiv), scoring 14 goals. Of these, 52 in European competition. 7 times won gold medals of the championship of Ukraine, once again - silver, won four Cups of Ukraine. Already in 1992, after a generational change and moving to the championship of independent Ukraine, he became the team captain, being one of the most respected players on the team. In difficult game moments, during trials, Luzhny justified the trust of the team and was its leader. I could support the young and put in place those who cut themselves off from the team. It was under Luzhny that Dynamo gained not only hegemony at the all-Ukrainian level, but also international prestige. He caught a team that was losing heavily to Rapid and Benfica, and left Dynamo, the Champions League semi-finalist.
“From Dynamo, in my opinion, there is only one way - to a strong European club,” the football player Luzhny admitted at one time. Paradoxically, the captain of the leading domestic club and the national team was very delayed with moving abroad. Not through their own fault. For a long time, fate itself contributed to the fact that Oleg could help Dynamo longer, which became his family.
So, in 1996, when the Ukrainian national team beat the Northern Irish on the road, representatives of Coventry City, who were present at the match in Belfast, drew attention to Luzhny. The negotiations went well, an official invitation was received, and an English visa was already stamped in Luzhny's passport. However, the Premier League club did not send confirmation at the last moment, legal issues hung in the air, and the transfer fell through.
Later, Luzhny was traded by Benfica. The Portuguese grandee promised our club, according to various sources, either 1.5 or 3 million dollars. But, again, non-football affairs intervened. And although the world media (including even the authoritative World Soccer) managed to announce that the Lisbon team would strengthen with the Ukrainian collection, and Luzhny’s contract with the Portuguese giant would last 3.5 years, in February 1999 Oleg again did not move to a foreign club. Well, that's good - but Dynamo, with the support of its experienced captain, knocked out the trophy holder - Real Madrid - from the Champions League, and in a two-match confrontation with Bayern they stopped only in the semi-finals.
After the triumphant performance of the Dynamo team and the status sale of Shevchenko to Milan, a new wave of conversations began. Luzhny was determined to play for Newcastle United, successfully passed the medical examination, but did not agree on all the points of the personal contract. However, I didn’t even have time to return from London to Kyiv, when an even more profitable offer from Arsenal arrived. Choosing between Magpies, Middlesbrough and West Ham, Oleg finally waited for a worthy option.
Who got what from Luzhny's transfer to Arsenal in the summer of 1999? Dynamo - an amount that the then press estimated at $ 2.5 million, Luzhny - his long-awaited chance to play for a worthy European club, Wenger - an experienced football player capable of performing complex tasks for the needs of his team. Now there is a certain skepticism in the press about the success of our legionnaires in the most prestigious national world championship, but let's figure it out. In four seasons at Arsenal, Oleg played 75 matches in the English Premier League alone, for a total of 110 for the Gunners. Not bad for a veteran who moved to one of the best clubs in Europe at that time at 31, and this was his first European experience - and also in terms of playing the line, which was not yet practiced in Ukraine at that time?!
Luzhny did not disappoint Wenger's Arsenal. The French manager has been looking for an experienced defender with the makings of universalism for a long time, therefore, although not always in the usual and most comfortable right-back position for himself, Oleg had quite regular playing practice. He managed to play in virtually every defensive position, in some games he led Arsenal with a captain's armband. You need to understand the needs of a coach at a long tournament distance in order to realize that a Ukrainian veteran was a very important and necessary element of the team building. The ex-Dynamo player became the champion of England in 2002, vice-champion - 2000, 2001 and 2003, was involved in victories in the FA Cup in 2002 and 2003, the finalist of the 2001 tournament, won the FA Super Cup in 1999 and 2002, as well as the silver medal of the UEFA Cup finalist −2000. Not bad for an older player?..
Even the 35-year-old Luzhny was in demand in the English Premier League, only Wolverhampton were not at all like the clubs where Oleg spent the best years of his career. In one season, Luzhny played only 10 matches for Wolverhampton in all competitions (6 in the championship), and according to the results of the Premier League 2003/04, the Wolves were relegated from the 20th place in the Premier League. “This season was the worst in my many years of career,” Oleg Romanovich admitted. - For various reasons, I did not have a relationship with the club's management, and, most likely, that is why I did not have proper match practice. In addition, I was haunted by the thought that after wonderful seasons at Arsenal, Wolves were not my level. It’s a pity for the lost time, because I perfectly understand that I still have a year or two left at my disposal, so I want to end my career on a positive note.”
There was an option - to leave the Wolves and go to Ipswich Town, and Luzhny also kept in shape with the Barnet club, but after the Premier League, Luzhny did not want to go down a level. And then there was an option with the Latvian team "Venta", where Oleg Romanovich was invited as a playing head coach. However, in the 2005 season, the ambitious club was only eighth, the veteran played 9 matches and did not realize all his coaching ideas. On April 4, 2006, Oleg Romanovich was among 22 Ukrainian coaches who were the first in the CIS to receive a UEFA Pro Diploma. A new stage of his life began - coaching.
He worked for many years in the coaching staff of Dynamo Kyiv, twice - in 2007 and 2010 - acting as head coach. In 2012-13 he was the head coach of Tavriya, he also worked in conjunction with Vladimir Bezzubyak in Karpaty Lviv. There is no doubt that the charismatic and strong-willed specialist will still have his say in the coaching field.
And the fact that Oleg Luzhny has taken one of the leading places in the history of Russian football is a fact. At the end of 2000, the newspaper "Ukrainian Football" conducted a nationwide poll to determine the best football players in Ukraine over the past hundred years. The publication received about 60,000 questionnaires from readers, and Luzhny entered the symbolic national team of Ukraine of the 20th century with a huge percentage of support at the level of Demyanenko and after Blokhin and Shevchenko.
