Davy Arkadyev is a man of the era. For many decades, he was virtually the chronicler of Dynamo Kyiv, and many of his books are still being reprinted. He co-authored two of Oleh Blokhin's autobiographies, The Right to Goal and Football for Life, and for decades wrote books about Dynamo's legends when they were not yet called legends.
Davy Arkadyev is also one of the examples of how to face noble grey hairs. He is 88 years old, but he creates content for his personal YouTube channel more actively than most younger colleagues. He remembers Dynamo's championships not only under Lobanovsky, but also under Maslov and Solovyov - but he hasn't lost interest in the club of his life, even when the club dropped out of the fight for the top three in the Ukrainian championship.
Despite the time difference (Davy has lived in Philadelphia since 1992) and his more than respectable age, he has been closely following events in European sports for many decades and commenting on them with some unique insight. Personally, it is a great honour for me to talk to this man.
Igor Belanov, Davi Arkadyev, Oleg Blokhin- Davi Arkadievich, it's morning now - tell us how your day went yesterday.
- Yesterday, thank God, I spent it working, which includes filming video content for YouTube and writing texts for my blog.
- What did you think of the last World Cup? Who impressed you the most?
- Well, I wasn't impressed by anyone, but I can tell you that I was happy to see the Argentinians win. Both the team and Messi personally. My like-minded people who gave their sympathies to Messi, they agreed with me that, of course, in addition to being a football genius, he is, as far as we can tell, a normal person, a good family man, moderately modest. And on the pitch, of course, he understands that football is a team game - he understands it with your actions, of course.
At the same time, I try to rise above the fray, so to speak, and be impartial.
- Which of today's forwards most closely resembles Oleg Blokhin in terms of his style of play?
- Oh, this is a difficult question, because in my opinion, Oleg Blokhin is a kind of unicorn in this respect, by the way, and Vasylovych spoke of him in such a way that when he was able to rebuild himself, his football, so to speak, psyche and his football condition. When Bazylevych and Lobanovskyi started working with the team in 1974, it was very difficult for Blokhin to rebuild himself - but he did!
But I would probably name Mbappe, if you want some closeness, Mbappe. He reminds me of something: he can pass three people, and maybe even finish.
- Just a superficial acquaintance with Oleg Blokhin is enough to understand that he is a complex person, let's say. Can you tell us how you co-authored The Right to Goal and Football for Life?
- From our first meetings like this, when we decided that we were going to co-author a book together, I could hear Oleg saying, "Arkadiyovych, what am I going to do there?" Therefore, when it came to payment, he said that five per cent would be enough for him if the whole book was written without him.
I said: " Oleg, I see it completely differently, I see it as afull-fledged co-authorship. Otherwise, I won't even take it on. I see us as being serious . I understand that you won't pick up a pen, but I have arecorder, and I can tell by the way wetalk on the phone that you've come from somewhere , and you don't want to sleep . And you don't hesitate to call me, I plug in my recorder , and we talk, I ask you questions, you tell me . Co-authorship exists when it is'you' , not 'for you'."
And he, you know, step by step, as they say... I could feel it, I even liked it, and he could fly over to call me, we could talk for a few hours, then I would ask new questions if they came up. And so, step by step... And the manner, if you've seen it, is in the first person. There, Oleg Blokhin says things that I can't invent, things that I would have learnt about, so to speak, without him, but it is set out and there are even additions.
This is how the work was done, and this is how the next two books were born.
- Let's continue to dive into the distant past. Tell us when and under what circumstances you first wrote lines about Dynamo Kyiv.
- My father was a boxer and boxing coach (Arkady Bakman was the USSR boxing champion in 1939 and later took part in World War II - ed. note), and I worked for 8 years as a coach at the Spartak boxing club in Odesa. I was not a fan of football, but in 1965 I was invited by the Komsomolskii Pravor newspaper. By the way, I had to take a pseudonym at that time: it was difficult for a Jew to get on the staff of a Soviet newspaper in the face of anti-Semitism.
It was interviewing people like Oshenkov(the coach who won the first trophies for Dynamo and Shakhtar) and Idzkovsky(the first legendary Dynamo goalkeeper - ed.), and that's when I started to get to know the personalities of Dynamo.
- Under what circumstances did you meet Valerii Lobanovskyi?
- I met Valerii Lobanovskyi in 1965, when he played for Chornomorets Odesa. At that time, Chornomorets was coached by Yurii Mykolaiovych Voynov, with whom I was already well acquainted.
(Yurii Voynov was the 1960 European champion as a footballer, the only representative of the Ukrainian club in that team. He began his career at Chornomorets as head coach, but by that time he had played five years at Dynamo together with Lobanovskyi - and, accordingly, Valerii came to play for a very familiar coach - ed.)
So I asked Voinov to put me in touch with Lobanovskyi - right at the Chornomorets stadium, which is actually my home stadium because it used to be a boxing ground. So we met with him, and I asked him questions.
I ask him questions that, you know, in my opinion, are the questions of a complete amateur, not a journalist who writes about football. For example, how much speed do you manage in your Volga on the streets of Odesa - that's the level of your car... In short, after this conversation, he says: "We are leaving now, we are flying to the training camp - and I have a request to you. When you've done your job, please print it and send it to me so that I can look at it and maybe correct it... He's an intelligent man, he understands, but he actually told me - I understand this only now - not to publish this nonsense, so to speak, about how much he was pushing the Volga through the streets.
I sent him what I had written and received a letter from him with some corrections, but with the following note: "Everything is as agreed, I have made the references, but I won't mind if this interview doesn't appear at all." I thought about it and wrote him a letter of thanks - we hadn't even called him back yet. But the interview was never published.
When he was coaching Dnipro, he invited me to a holiday at home on a free day. And when the vodka was poured into glasses, and I remember, he poured me a drink and said: "Davy, let's be on a first-name basis." I said: "Out of respect for you and so that we can maintain normal relations, I will continue to use the first name, Valery Vasilyevich."
- 50 years ago, Lobanovsky said: "The days of a coach's superstition are over. Sport is an exact science, and a coach is a versatile scientist". Don't you think that the modern Dynamo, while immensely respecting the Masters in words, betrays his principles in deeds? There are insights that the club doesn't study Ukrainian league rivals at all, while in the seventies the club used to send coaches to Uzhhorod to catch foreign broadcasts.
- Unfortunately, to what you are saying, I can only say: "You are right." Visually watching the current Dynamo play, you don't see the developments that were rolled out thanks to the methodology laid down by Bazylevych, Zelentsov and Lobanovskyi.
By the way, Serhiy Baltacha, who dreams of such an academy, understands that he wants to preserve this heritage because he has experienced it. He has been working in London for 33 years in his profession, and he has been successful - he was invited to the royal box for the match at Wembley in April, he is so respected.
He has been working in English football (Baltacha has been working in the Charlton academy since 2001, except for a break in 2008-12 at Chelsea- ed.) - and he sees that it works. He really wants to set up his own academy in London, and we decided to call it the Valery Lobanovsky Ukrainian International Football Academy. When he went to the main Italian coaching school, Coverciano, he heard many coaches thank Lobanovsky. He gave lectures to many of the current European top coaches there, and they were remembered at the time.
This legacy, which I never tire of talking about, is, unfortunately, anywhere but at my home club.
- Did Lobanovskyi's notes, which were mentioned by a double-digit number of Dynamo coaches, ever exist in physical form? Did he write something down, entrust some texts to any of his assistants and players afterwards?
- I've never spoken about this topic, but I think I need to clarify something. In the years when Vasylovych started his coaching career, any coach who came to train had to have a training note for that training session.
Back when I was coaching the Odesa Oblast national team, preparing for the Ukrainian championship, the sports committee came to inspect us - and immediately politely, with a smile: "Can I see the training notes?". So the coach would prepare a training plan when he went to training, but it was no more detailed than a plan of a prospectus.
One, two, three - warm-up, main part, final part - you had to have a training outline. Football coaches who work in the top league should have had a training plan in the same way. But this is completely frivolous in the context of inheriting his principles. And I have never seen Lobanovsky's notes as such with my own eyes.
- Which modern coach is most similar in style to Lobanovskyi?
- Guardiola.
- How do you assess Valery Vasilyevich in the context of his shortcomings? Would he have been able to realise himself in sport without match-fixing, which is now being talked about as a fact?
- We talked about them with him, we talked, so to speak, frankly, and there were such things... For example, I witnessed a match when he was coaching Dnipro, when the match was "fused" by his teammates, who were seriously motivated, to put it mildly.
(We're talking about the end of the 1969 season, when Dnipro, having won its first league group, unexpectedly lost to Spartak Ordzhonikidze in the final tournament. I had to postpone my dreams of the top league for two years - ed.)
In one of my books, I describe a moment when we were flying out of Simferopol, the weather was bad, and we spent the whole night at the same table. He never touched his cup of coffee, and we talked for hours... I said, "How could you not know that?
He understood it - and he certainly did not deny it, but in these conversations he showed that it was impossible to avoid. And you see, this was Lobanovsky's position here, I understood him, and this was his main gripe, that they started to blame him for these 'treaties', that he was the originator of these 'treaties', that's what it was all about.
- Davy Arkadyevich, you are one of the few people who can answer the sacramental question with knowledge. Who is the best in history: Pele, Maradona, Messi - or maybe Ronaldo?
- I'm afraid to say.
- Who is the greatest Argentine coach: Menotti, Bilardo or Scaloni?
- I liked Menotti's team better.
- Ernst Happel or Ancelotti?
- Ancelotti.
- Miguel Munoz or Zinedine Zidane?
- Zidane.
- Then Ancelotti or Zidane?
- Zidane.
- Zidane or Lobanovsky?
- Lobanovsky.
Vitalii Pasichnyi.
