The captain of a football, hockey, basketball, rugby, volleyball, handball or water polo team is a highly respected player, a team leader ready to lead his team in a difficult situation.
Victor KolotovSince 1954, from the age of 12, I became a goalkeeper for the Dynamo school team and began to observe the captains. The first one who was the focus of my attention for a few years was the captain of our youth team, which in 1960 defeated Spartak Moscow 3-0 in the final match to become the USSR champion. Nikolai Pinchuk was a role model for us on and off the pitch.
Having attended Dynamo matches in the USSR championships, Cup matches since 1954 and later becoming a sports journalist, I had been watching the captains of Dynamo in home and away games, European Cup tournaments, the CIS Champions Cup, the First Channel Cup in Tel-Aviv, the tournament in memory of Valerii Lobanovskii in Kyiv.
In different years, captains of Dynamo were goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders and strikers. Masters and honoured masters of sports, winners of Ballon d'Or, the Olympic champion, winners of the European Cup Winners' Cup and the Super Cup.
Some of them have taken to the pitch with the captain's armband for several seasons in a row, some for several games. After many matches, captains and their partners left the field in a good mood. Failures have also happened. This is football!
I have decided to name 10 captains of Dynamo who I remember in my subjective opinion: Voinov, Kanevskiy, Biba, Muntian, Kolotov, Demyanenko, Blokhin, Luzhny, Shevchenko, Shovkovskiy.
Serhiy Sydorchuk, the current Dynamo captain. I will not assess his playing qualities. However, I do not like his behaviour on the pitch. The captain often gets into unnecessary disputes with the referees, gets cards, and sometimes plays roughly, for which his team is penalized. He is not the leader of the team, but the team has chosen or appointed him. I have never seen him "shoving" his partner on the pitch for making mistakes for not giving his all in a game, as Oleg Luzhny often did.
I think it would be great to make the busts of Dynamo captains of different years on the side alley which goes from the gate to the stadium named after Valerii Lobanovs'kyi to the club office building. Let the fans know their names.
I will conclude this material with the words of the song from the film Children of Captain Grant: "Captain, captain, smile! For a smile is the flag of the ship...". I would like to add, smile more often captains of Dynamo football "ships". May there be more reasons for that.
Oleksandr LYPENKO for Dynamo.kiev.ua
