"I lived in a happy football time", - so called his second book Leonid Buriak - a famous football player, Honoured Master of Sports, five-time champion and seven-time winner of the USSR Cup, winner of the Cup Winners' Cup and UEFA Super Cup 1975. Honoured Coach of Ukraine, the best coach of the country in 1994 and 1995.
Now Leonid Iosifovich is an ambassador of FC Dynamo (Kyiv). I offer you some more fragments from this book.
Leonid Buryak. Photo - A.PopovA declaration of love at the Olympic parade
The opening of the 1976 Olympics in Montreal is like a day of miracles. One of them was waiting for me. When I was walking in the column at the parade of participants of the Games and we were rounding a steep sector on a treadmill, in the noise of the crowded stands I heard: "Lenya, Lenya, Lenya!". I looked - our "artists": Zhanna, Ira Deryugina, Galima Shugurova. Waving their hands. Our girls were invited to the Olympics so that they could demonstrate the possibilities of rhythmic gymnastics, the inclusion of which in the Olympic programme was already being actively discussed.
Of course, at the first opportunity I moved in with them. The Olympic flame flashed, the Olympic anthem sounded. Goosebumps ran down my spine. Holding my hand, Jeanne whispered: "How good!... I'm happy we're together." "Me too," I replied. Without taking my eyes off the sacred fire, I said softly to Zhanna, "Do you agree?". "With what, Lenechka?" - she interrogated. And I blurted out: "I want you to become my wife. We'll come back, I'll finish the season - and let's get married." - "Lenechka, is that a declaration of love?" - "Consider it an explanation. Yes or no?" - "Yes, of course yes!"
The standard of a manly man
My friendship with Yuri Fyodorovich Kravchenko bound me for more than one year. Any man is flattered when he is considered manly. But what is courage? What criteria are used to evaluate this quality? The question is, of course, rhetorical. For me, a manly man is Yuri Kravchenko. That Kravchenko, who in the mid-90s, being the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, in a bulletproof vest and with an automatic rifle for two days practically without rest together with his subordinates, risking their lives, was engaged in "cleaning up" the Crimean peninsula from organised bandit formations. But he could well have managed this process by radio or telephone. Who or what pushed him to the front line under bullets in peacetime?
But one day I dialled his number, and we called each other every day, and nobody answered me. That tragic morning Yuri Fedorovich was gone....
What secrets did he take with him? Alas, we will probably never know...
He built his work on Lobanovsky's creative principles
In the early 70s, I was promised to be given a two-room flat in Kyiv. But they kept postponing the issue. Together with Lobanovsky, I went into the "high" office. Its owner flatly refused to keep his word. I almost cried from frustration - I had promised him!...
Vasilych told me to go to training, and promised to sort everything out. I didn't think he would be able to do it. In the evening of the same day he himself came to my room in the old building of the base in Koncha-Zaspa and somehow mundanely said: "Well, hold your warrant for the flat. At least invite me to the housewarming party?"
With Lobanovsky I won everything I could only dream of. The title of champion of the USSR, winner of the Cup of the country, Cup Winners' Cup and UEFA Super Cup, became an honoured master of sports. He moulded me into a professional, and for many years he was my guide in the world of football. When I became a coach, I built my work on his creative principles. For me, he will always remain a senior comrade and spiritual mentor.
Special inexpressible feelings
How quickly time flies... Once it was an empty phrase for me, but now it is filled with a special philosophical meaning, coloured with a whole range of feelings. Now Jeanne and I are experiencing special inexpressible feelings. Because we are grandparents! Andrei and Oksana gave us five grandchildren.
This means that our family happiness has increased many times over. We rejoice in it and try, as before, to carry it through life carefully and reverently, like a cup filled to the brim - so that, God forbid, not to spill, not to spill a drop.
Alexander LIPENKO for Dynamo.kiev.ua
