In different years, the NSC Olimpiyskiy has hosted a number of matches. Those are the football tournament of the XXII Summer Olympic Games, the UEFA European Championship 2012 and its final, which brought together the national teams of Spain and Italy, the final match of the Champions League 2018 between Real Madrid and Liverpool, the Ukrainian national football team has played there many matches.
The republican stadium in Kiev. The current NSC OlimpiyskiyOn October 17, having played 0:0 with Kharkiv Avangard their penultimate match of the USSR championship in 1961, Dynamo Kyiv became the owner of the gold medals for the first time, forever interrupting a 25-year hegemony of the Moscow clubs.
On September 9, 1975, having beaten the famous Bayern Munich 2-0, Valeriy Lobanovskiy's charges became UEFA Super Cup winners.
On the green lawn of the main sports arena of Ukraine in the European Cup matches FC Dynamo has beaten such football clubs as Bayern, Celtic, Arsenal, Borussia, Spartak, Roma, Newcastle.
The stadium is on a par with such European arenas as London's Wembley, Madrid's Santiago Bernabeu, Rome's Olimpico and Paris' Parc de Prince. At one time the arena had a capacity of 1,062 spectators and at some matches there were no empty seats in the stands. The record of attendance of Ukrainian football championships is held at the NSC Olimpiyskiy in 2001 for the Dynamo vs Shakhtar match - 73950 spectators. This record cannot be broken, because after reconstruction the capacity of the stadium was reduced to 7,750 spectators.
And now about one match held on the pitch of Olimpiyskiy on 13 September 1992, about which you will not find information in any football reference book.
Journalists versus entertainers.
At the time I was head of sport department of the popular Kievskiye Vedomosti newspaper and I am pleased that the idea of such a match belonged to me. Now I can reveal a little secret that in this way I wanted to celebrate my 50th birthday among friends. The organizer of this match was "Kievskie Vedomosti" and the stadium management agreed. The general sponsor was Patent market, which at that time operated in the stadium and was very popular among the Kiev citizens and guests to the city.
The match between the "Pressing" and "Artobstrel" was scheduled for Saturday at 15.00. The match organizers were counting on the fact that many visitors to the "Patent" were eager to watch an unusual encounter. Entry to the 100,000-seat arena was free. The match was preceded by a powerful advertising campaign. The match sponsor promised free beer for male spectators, and branded plastic bags for women, which were in short supply in those days, and ice cream for children.
And now for the opponents. The "Pressing" team consisted of members of various media outlets. At the time of the match the team had already existed for three years and had played more than one match. "Art Shooting" consisted of artists, singers and representatives of show business. The head referee of the match was the then best referee in Ukraine Konstantin Vikhrov.
Knees trembled
Going out to the pre-match warm-up, my knees trembled. The stadium was already packed with around 30 thousand spectators, and they kept filling up the stands. Stadium staff had to urgently "unlock" locked entrances to the upper tier stands, to be honest, nobody expected that the match would cause such a stir among football fans, because at that time matches of the Ukrainian championship rarely gathered more than 10000-15000 spectators.
When the captain of our team, the football columnist Valeriy Mirskyi ("Kievskie Vedomosti"), well-known and loved by all the people of Kiev, led us off to the game, the stands were full. As the announcer later said there were 87000 spectators in the stands. Never, in the history of football or any other sport, has an amateur team match in any country or stadium in the world gathered so many spectators. Of course, the game had to go down in the Guinness Book of World Records. But no one bothered to register the event, although there were official match protocols. It is a shame, but we journalists are to blame for it.
Now for the game itself, which ended 2-1 in favour of Pressing. Each of the players on the pitch fought for every ball with full dedication, the players spared neither themselves nor their opponents, and Vikhrov showed 3 yellow cards.
Yakov Utkin, an actor from the Arsenal studio theatre, opened the scoring in the middle of the first half. Then a penalty was awarded in our goal. I don't know how I managed to parry that penalty kick, which was kicked by the popular film actor Oleg Fedorinsky, but the football god was on my side that day. Oleg shot well and strongly, but my jump was such that I was rewarded with applause from the packed stadium bowl. Not every professional goalkeeper in his career has been honoured by over 80,000 people clapping at the same time. The first half ended with the score at 1-0. The goal of Artobstrel, which was defended by renowned goalkeeper Gennadiy Lysenchuk in the past, remained unlocked. The match was reported at the stadium by the well-known commentator Olexiy Semenenko.
At half-time, the men rushed to get the promised beer, which was brought to the stadium in two tanks. The plastic vats ran out pretty quickly and there wasn't enough for everyone who wanted a beer. As a friend of mine who also attended the match told me, some of the fans had condoms in their pockets that had been bought that day at Patent. They filled them with the coveted drink. Children were given ice-cream, women were given bags with the logo. Unfortunately, not everyone got one, but everyone was happy.
But let us return to the NSC Olimpiyskiy pitch for the second half of this unusual match.
During the second 45 minutes spectators saw two goals scored by Artobstrel. Both of them were scored by forward Yuriy Say (Sportivnaya Gazeta). Along with him in the "Pressing" also played: Viktor Branitskiy, Oleksandr Bilyk ("The Voice of Ukraine"), Volodymyr Kuleba and Valeriy Vykhovanets ("Independence"), Aleksandr Shvets ("Kievskie Vedomosti"), Valeriy Rykunov ("Rabochaya Gazeta"), Valentyn Scherbachev, Sergiy Savelyi, Grigory Kolomiets, Volodymyr Kardash (Ukrainian television), Yuriy Korzachenko, Aleksandr Budnitskiy, Dmytro Aleksandrenko ("Sportyvna Gazeta"). Do not blame colleagues if some of them have not been mentioned.
As for the line-up of Artobostrel, I have a problem with it. I remember that Yuriy Rybchinskiy played in the midfield.
"The teams spent the third half together in the restaurant located on the stadium grounds in a warm and friendly atmosphere. The match sponsor was generous.
The match on 13 September 1992 with 87000 spectators was worthy of being listed in the Guinness book of records, but as they say, it was not. But that's not the main thing. The main thing is that it happened in Kyiv, and I, as well as my friends and colleagues, were the participants of that match and it will never happen again.
Oleksandr LYPENKO for Dynamo.kiev.ua
