Former midfielder of Minsk Dynamo and the USSR national team Sergei Aleinikov, in an interview with the publication “24 hours,” answered the question of comparing Eduard Malofeyev with Valery Lobanovsky, who took turns leading the Soviet national football team, and also admitted that he had chances to end up at Kyiv’s Dynamo.
— Could you compare Malofeyev and Lobanovsky? After all, the latter replaced the former as coach of the USSR national team just a few days before the 1986 World Cup in Mexico?
— Comparing coaches is not very fair. Everyone has their own idea of how the team’s game should be structured.
You as a fan, and then as a journalist, watch football from your perspective. And the coach sees it from a completely different angle. Each coach in each team has their own vision of football. Their main problem is and will always be how to implement their ideas on the field, and whether they can find the right players for such a game model. Sometimes, the team’s play looks beautiful and appealing, but the conversion of scoring chances is lacking, and success doesn’t come because of that.
— Did Lobanovsky invite you to Kyiv’s Dynamo?
— Something like that happened after the 1988 European Championship. He didn’t invite me directly, but he hinted.