Former Dnipro player Serhii Bashkirov passed away

On 19 September, after a long illness, Serhiy Bashkirov, one of the key players of Dnipro in the 1980s, passed away. His name is associated with the successes of this team under the leadership of Volodymyr Yemets and Yevhen Kucherevskyi. With the former he won bronze medals in 1984 and 1985, with the latter he won silver and gold medals in 1987 and 1988, respectively, and in 1989 he won the USSR Cup.

Bashkirov made his professional football debut at the age of 17. His first team was Stal Cheboksary, from where he was invited to Spartak Moscow two years later. After not playing a single match for Spartak, he moved to Pakhtakor Tashkent, which needed new players after the team's death in a plane crash in August 1979. However, Serhiy Bashkirov did not have a long stay in the Uzbek capital and was forced to play in the first and second leagues for the next four years. In 1983, fate brought him to Ukraine, where he defended the colours of Zaporizhzhia Metalurg. His reliable play for this club could not leave the then head coach of Dnipro, Volodymyr Yemets, indifferent, and soon Bashkirov found himself in Dnipro. He spent the best years of his career in this team. Several seasons at the junction of the 80s and 90s at the same Zaporizhzhia Metalurh, where the player was invited by the former head of the Dnipro team, Gennadiy Zhyzdyk, were also bright. Serhii Bashkirov helped this team win a ticket to the USSR Premier League, where Metallurg were a strong mid-table side.

At a mature football age, he managed to try himself abroad, where he played for clubs in Poland and Germany.

After hanging up his boots at the age of 35, Sergei Bashkirov took up coaching some time later. For many seasons, he worked in close alliance with Oleg Taran, with whom he had been friends since his playing days at Dnipro and Metalurh. Bashkirov worked with him on the coaching staffs of Kryvbas Kryvyi Rih, Czech Opava, Slovak Slovan Bratislava, the same Zaporizhzhia-based Metalurh and Peremoha Dnipro.

Bashkirov and Oleh Taran are connected not only by their almost forty-year friendship, but also by their partnership on the football field and in the coaching staff. During their time as Dnipro players, both men married twin sisters. In addition, Serhiy Bashkirov is the father-in-law of Croatian Mladen Bartulovic, who married his daughter Natalia at the beginning of the last decade.

Unfortunately, Bashkirov's health has recently taken a turn for the worse. Despite his best efforts, cancer did its insidious work, ending the life of a wonderful man and a true professional at the age of 64...