At the age of 75, the former player of Dynamo, Zorya, Dnipro and the USSR national team Vyacheslav Semenov died.
The Dynamo school trained a number of original football masters - they all dreamed of playing for their native club, but not all of them managed to break through in a competitive environment, like in a cosmonaut corps or a budget place in a prestigious university. Vyacheslav Semyonov did not play much for Dynamo, but he grew to the European Cups and the national team, and then for many years he passed on his experience to the young pupils of his native team.
On August 12, 2022, less than a week before his 75th birthday, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich died. His memory is a story about a technical attacking player with an excellent vision of the field, who was remembered by football fans of the 70s Semenov.
Vyacheslav Semyonov was born on August 18, 1947 in Kyiv. His father, a Turkish citizen Kasim Magomed Khalil, died when Slava was 8 years old and left a family with four children for his mother. The family lived in poverty, but the children stood up and supported each other. Despite being constantly busy with studies and housekeeping, Vyacheslav Semenov became interested in football and did not want to think about any other job. During one of the yard battles, Slava was noticed by Dynamo understudy Pestrikov and stubbornly advised him to go to the football school of the team of masters. It was only from the first entry into Dynamo that Slava had to give up his dream...
“We lived so poorly that our parents didn’t have money for sneakers - and we played outside in the rain and heat, so I was forced to leave Dynamo, because there it was necessary to have sports shoes, which I could only dream. It was not until the following spring that I decided to come back to the children's football school. And at the second training session, our team went out to play with the strong GorVNO team. After the first half, we "burned" - 0:3, so the coach dared to completely replace the entire squad. We, the "ambitious understudies", managed to even the score, and although the wards of the legendary Korsunsky still won, the coaches "laid their eye" on me. Since then, my place at the core has not been in doubt, ”Vyacheslav Mikhailovich recalled in an interview.
In 1959, 12-year-old Semyonov entered the Dynamo training school, where Evgeny Lemeshko became his first coach. However, Evgeny Filippovich soon headed the team of masters and completed work with children, so Slava continued to work under the guidance of other coaches. In 1965, he ended up with a group of the club's most talented young men at Dynamo-2 with Oleg Makarov. And in 1966, Viktor Maslov had already begun to actively attract Semenov to the first Dynamo club team. For a double, the young talent scored 46 goals in four incomplete seasons, reaching the figure of 16 goals twice in a year.
On December 3, 1967, Vyacheslav Semyonov replaced Fedor Medvid in the 63rd minute, making his debut in the Premier League (the champion's home defeat against Dynamo Minsk - 0:1). But in Maslov's super-team, the competition was such that even the collections could not be sure of their place in the base, to say nothing of the 20-year-old newcomer. For three seasons, Slava played only three matches in the first team. His prospects were not in doubt, but the team that "thundered" at the all-Union level and promoted the path of Soviet football to Europe simply had no time to deal with a young player.
There was a demand for Semenov - he had an invitation from the Armenian "Ararat", as well as from the Moscow "Torpedo" - in many respects a trendsetter in Soviet football of the 60s.
“When I handed Viktor Alexandrovich an application for a transfer from Dynamo to the Moscow club in the sanatorium in Gagra, “Grandfather”, a native torpedo player, began to dissuade me: “You are from Kiev, why do you need that Moscow! Right now we are giving you a one-room apartment - join the main team! Me and "soft". I call Moscow, I refuse a tour of South America. It was my first mistake! Torpedo took Gulyamkhaydarov, and I was soon returned to the double, ”Vyacheslav later said.
He honestly tried to break into Dynamo, and when it didn’t work out, he preferred another Republican team. So in 1969, Semenov became a player in the Luhansk Zorya.
In Voroshilovgrad (as the city of Luhansk was temporarily called by that time), the first persons of the region favorably treated football. A "football boom" was brewing. And in 1972, Zorya with Onishchenko and Semyonov became the champion of the USSR, shocking the Soviet Union, which was not used to the success of "provincial teams". Under the leadership of German Zonin, the Luhansk team achieved unprecedented success, and Dynamo did everything possible to return their own pupils.
1972 - the peak of the career of Vyacheslav Semenov. With seven goals in 27 matches, he was a key player in the champion Zorya. Won a bronze medal at the Munich Olympics (5 matches, 3 goals). Participated in the "Independence Cup" in Brazil as part of the USSR national team. In total, he played 11 matches for the USSR national team, scoring 3 goals. Against the backdrop of such a bright season, only the second place in the position of the central midfielder in the list of "33 best" in 1972 is a real injustice (at that time Fedotov from CSKA was number 1).
“One of the strongest players of Zorya in its heyday. Well-trained technically, fast, temperamental, constantly striving to take over the game, but he played the brightest matches as a Zorya dispatcher. He skillfully directed the team’s attacks, supplied his partners with sharp passes, completed the jerks from the depth of the field with aimed shots, ”this is how Vyacheslav was characterized by his contemporaries.
However, the return to Dynamo turned out to be surprisingly unsuccessful for Semenov. 22 matches without goals in the 1973 championship, which ended for the Kyivans in second place in the championship and losing the cup (Ararat, inviting Slava, took away these trophies from his team), and the next year Vyacheslav did not play at all due to injury, only appeared in the reserve at the end of the season. Then he survived a 5-match suspension for a go-ahead against Rodin from Lviv. Having not won a strong place at the base of Sevidov, under Lobanovsky and Bazilevich, Vyacheslav generally fell out of the cage.
Although there were bright matches: in 1973, Semenov scored after a heel pass from Kolotov to the Santiago Bernabeu, but the referee did not count Real's goal due to offside, and six months later, in a match with the Norwegian Fredrikstad, Slava gave a good pass to Blokhin. In total, Semenov played 25 matches for Dynamo in the USSR championship, seven in the Soviet Union Cup, and four in European cups. For 36 matches in his native team, he scored only one goal - from the pass of Muntean he opened the scoring in the cup match with CSKA, shooting Astapovsky's goal with a biting blow (3:0 in the end).
So Semenov first played for Dnipro (11 matches, 1 goal in 1975), after which he returned to Zorya, for which he played 146 matches in the USSR championships in total, scoring 32 goals. In total, he played 182 matches in the Major League, scoring 33 goals. In the USSR Cup - 25 matches, 5 goals. Champion of the USSR in 1972 with Zorya, vice-champion and finalist of the USSR Cup in 1973 with Dynamo. Repeated winner and prize-winner of the understudy tournament. Participated in the qualifying tournament of the 1974 World Cup, where the USSR national team did not go due to disqualification (refusing to play with Chile for political reasons).
In 1978, Vyacheslav Semenov finished playing in the Kyiv SKA, where he was also the head coach for some time. However, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich worked with adults for only a few months - in the army club he was ordered to be replaced by a Russian who needed work.
Since 1979, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Semenov worked at the Dynamo youth football school. Among his students are Oleg Derevinsky, Vladimir Tsytkin, Alexander Prikhodko, Andrey Oberemko, Evgeny Makarenko and many others. In the years of the collapse of the USSR, his most talented pupils were dismantled by the clubs of France, Germany, the USA - it is not known if they could have been completely cut in their native academy, perhaps they would have surpassed other players that Semyonov released ...
“I am an eternal Dynamo player,” Vyacheslav Semyonov said about himself. And although fate decreed that he did not play so much in his native club, it was difficult to surpass him in devotion and commitment to Dynamo (Kyiv). From the end of the 50s and actually until the last years of his life, Mikhailovich gave his knowledge and skills to Dynamo youth - so we hope that the same technical and skillful attacking midfielders will come to our team, for whom the letter "D" on the T-shirt will mean the same a lot of.