Interview with Football 24 with Anton Brovarnik, goalkeeper of Kyiv "Dynamo" from the 1980s, who became a doctor.
Anton Brovarnik— I eat only once a day. At one o'clock in the morning. I have coffee and apple seeds for breakfast. Recently, a scientist received a Nobel Prize for this intermittent fasting. And I’ve been living like this for 25 years. And I have no complaints.
— You don’t force yourself to do this?
— No, I enjoy it. Just like I enjoy training on special simulators that I patented. I love saunas and ice water. I don’t use hot water — nor soap, shampoo, or any creams.
— Did you have a significant shift in your lifestyle after finishing your football career?
— Yes. Would you believe that I have a second group of disability? If we analyze my X-rays, I will only start moving after replacing two hip joints and two knee joints. Plus, four vertebrae and three discs... I’ve had eight surgeries, including two spinal fractures.
— Are all of these football injuries?
— The first fracture was a result of practicing martial arts. I got it foolishly doing kung fu. I won the duel but wanted to do it beautifully. I was trying a jump kick — my legs went out from under me, and my face hit the mat. I was almost 16 years old. Considering that I started playing as a goalkeeper three years earlier, the situation was complicated. I spent several months recuperating, but I returned.
— And the second fracture?
— Already with "Dynamo." You know, I was thought to be lazy there. As soon as the whistle blew for the end of training, that was it — it was as if a cow licked me clean. But I allowed myself such things only in the reserves. If I had pulled a similar stunt in the main team, they would have kicked me out for sure. In general, my typical day looked like this — at seven in the morning, I was in the acrobatics hall. There, in two months, I learned to do double flips with "kicks," rolls, and other things. I also performed a reaction exercise — during one session, I received a thousand balls from the wall. At eleven o'clock — the first training in "Dynamo." Before the second evening session, I would run into the institute. By the way, because of my studies at the university, I had my first argument with Valery Vasilyevich.
— Why?
— Lobanovsky wouldn’t let me enroll at the university and pushed me into the physical education institute. I refused and said that I wouldn’t study there for more than three years. "Twelve," Valery Vasilyevich countered. And perhaps I had chances to win the bet, but "Dynamo" sent me to "Zorya," from where Yuran, Bidny, Volotyok, Guseynov, and Pogodin moved to Kyiv. "What are you happy about? This is the first league!" Lobanovsky said. "I’ll play for a year and return to the top league," I replied. But the coach believed that I could only play in the top league for "Dynamo."
— But you had no chances, considering the strong competition.
— In "Dynamo" during my time, there were two goalkeepers — both of them from the national team. One was 25 years old, the other was 26. I was simply unnecessary and could forget about playing in the main team for the next five years.
— You didn't play often in the reserves either.
— In my first season — just three matches, and all against the odds, not thanks to them. I debuted in Alma-Ata because the plane with the main squad was delayed and didn't make it to the reserve match. I played fairly well, saved a penalty. I waited several months for the next match. Vitya Grishko got injured but went on the field. By the 15th minute, I had conceded three goals, and they subbed me out. I didn’t concede. I came on for the third time in the last round against Moscow "Dynamo," when we became champions. We won 2:0, and I again played a "clean sheet."
— Do you have an explanation for such a lack of trust?
— Maybe because I would leave right after the trainings. It seems strange when we win 5:0 or 7:1, everyone gets subbed on, and I sit there. Couldn’t I have been given just 10 minutes to play? Once, Mikhail Fomenko and I were heading to training on trolleybus number 20. "You don’t like training, do you?" Mikhail Ivanovich asked. "I train to play, not the other way around," I replied. If there were no complaints about my play in the national team, and I brought individual awards from each tournament, then my philosophy wasn’t wrong.
— You are a native Kyivite. For you, playing for "Dynamo" was not just a desire?
— Of course. It was a dream and the main goal. I am a Kyivite of the fourth generation, all my ancestors rest in Baykiv. The problem is, however, that I was a rebel by nature. I wasn’t a pioneer or a October child — I ripped all of that away from myself. I only joined the Komsomol. But only after I saw what they did to Pasha Yakovenko for refusing. If a national team player was treated like that, what would happen to me? A child once asked me how long my parents took me to school. "Until September 2," I replied. On the first day, they showed me the way, and the next day, they sent me off on my own.
— You are 194 centimeters tall?
— 197. Until the 9th grade, I wasn’t too tall, and then I grew by 20 centimeters.
— You said you only became a goalkeeper at 13. Why so late?
— In the 7th grade, I was still a field player and took exams at the sports boarding school as a forward. My legs weren’t strong, but I scored a lot with my head. The problem was that my parents couldn’t bring money, so I was expelled from the sports boarding school. The formulation stated that I was not just rejected for football. I couldn’t even play checkers with Chapayev. I wasn't picked for any section in Kyiv.
— How did you manage to get into football on your second try?
— A legendary former goalkeeper of "Dynamo," Anton Idzkovskyi, lived in my building. Once, he saw me looking sad. "Get in goal," advised Anton Leonidovych. But I said, "What goal? I’m 13." Once I scored a goal and ran into the goal. I turned my head to the right — the post was a kilometer away. I looked in the other direction — and it was also a kilometer. How could I stand in those goals? Ultimately, Idzkovskyi arranged for me to transfer to "Dynamo." I arrived there as the sixth goalkeeper. And what is a sixth goalkeeper?
— What?
— The second goalkeeper carries the balls. And from the third onwards — sweep the floor, take out the trash, paint something. I quit school, started training hard, and began to progress. Just then we were going to the USSR championship held in Rivne, and our main goalkeeper didn’t show up. My first coach, Alexander Chubarov, put me in goal and didn’t regret it. I received a prize for the best goalkeeper of the tournament.
— You even reached the level of a goalkeeper for the USSR national team.
— That’s when I first faced off against Muscovites. You still have to put your hand on your heart and say that people from St. Petersburg were different from those from Moscow. They weren’t that annoying. I was always in combat with them. While I was battling with the Muscovites head-to-head, they were winning. Then I decided to play chess with them, so to speak. And I achieved success.
— Who from your team achieved the most success?
— Oh, our national team was all-star: Kolivanov, Kobelyev, Kiryakov, Dobrovolsky, Kharin. The latter appeared out of nowhere — a year younger. They started putting him in the squad. Fortunately, there was at least one decent coach in the national team — Alexander Piskaryov. I openly asked him why we were so disliked. He explained that it was all about the federation's attitude.
— Going back to Kharin - he still made it to Chelsea. Agree, that’s solid.
— But then I pushed him out of the lineup, and Kharin was transferred to the younger national team. Piskaryov said that I had to play three heads above and I succeeded. I practically brought home the prize for the best player from each tournament. This continued until our great Kyivite Anatoly Byshovets came to the national team. He immediately crossed my name off the list.
— Do you have an explanation?
— Perhaps because I was a student of Chubarov, with whom he had a bad relationship. Once I went to the national team but immediately quarreled with the coach. In one match, we went into the half with a score of 0:1. And this with me having made many incredible saves. In the locker room, Byshovets rhetorically asked, "Do we have anything in goal?" On emotion, I threw the glove. "Get undressed! You’ll finish with football!" Byshovets shouted. I didn’t go anywhere after that. Like I said — I didn’t keep quiet in sports.
— Do you regret your impulsive actions?
— Essentially, I was right. Formally — not always. I remember a case in "Dynamo." In 1985, along with other Dynamo players, I took part in the filming of the movie "The Wedding is Accused." We filmed all day; it was chilly, a pause appeared, and Viktor Kolotov suggested we warm up. We played "dir-dir," and as fate would have it, one of the guys fell awkwardly on me — I tore my acromioclavicular joint. I was out for two months. Just as I was getting ready to return to the field, the coaches said we had to go to a Spartakiad.
— Were you not ready?
— The coaches saw Andriy Kovtun as the first choice. Why should I force events if someone else will play? I wasn’t thrilled, but I had to start training, hurried, didn’t fully recover, and went. I bandaged my side, fell, endured pain, but worked. In the end, Kovtun played, and I suffered a relapse. In response, I started a rebellion. And that was only one such instance.
— You mentioned premature preparation. At that time, medical staffs didn’t pay adequate attention to injuries?
— Often, they turned a blind eye to it. In a reserve match, I broke four ribs. I went to Valery Vasilyevich and told him about it. I said I even had an X-ray. But that didn’t help me. In Kyiv "Dynamo," players were excused from training only in two cases: if there was a certificate of death or in case of an open fracture.
— You weren't among those people who put up with this?
— I started thinking — maybe football isn’t entirely what I dreamed of. In "Dynamo," goalkeepers ran with everyone, took the Cooper test. Once, I almost lost consciousness. In the end, I was fined. What can I say — with Lobanovsky, a day off during training camp looked like this: four kilometers of jogging on the beach, then intervals and jumps on the sand, then two hours of speed training, and at 5 PM, sparring. If we lost, we’d jog in the evening too. And this was only a conditional day off.
— Did you immediately understand where you ended up?
— When I got on the bus during the training camp in Gagra, I was struck by the positive vibe of the team. Suddenly, Anatoliy Puzach stands up and says, "Young guys, an announcement for you. When you fall, crawl to the road. Training is short; we’ll pick you up." I thought to myself — whoa, it turns out the coaches are jokers here. Only later did I find out that no one was joking.
— With what thoughts did you turn the page on your time at "Dynamo"?
— I perceived "Dynamo" as if it were my family. I hold no grudges. I have my own vision, but I understand that only the coach bears responsibility for the result. Valery Vasilyevich was a brilliant man. Now, they want to copy him. But that's impossible. He had flies flying according to schedule, cockroaches crawling according to schedule. He calculated everything down to the second. Moreover, I have something to compare — I've seen enough of this in other teams!
— You retired very early.
— At 28 years old. I finished at "Kuban." I signed a terrible contract that tied my hands. I also didn’t have luck with the coach — Leonid Nazarenko did everything chaotically and meaninglessly. I returned to Ukraine, trained at "CSKA-Boryspil," although no club could sign me due to that contract. Together with the well-known doctor Yaroslav Linyk, I began working at a clinic, got into medicine, and started studying. That’s how I launched my medical career.
— Do you remember football primarily positively?
— One coach met me and said that I committed a crime since I didn’t achieve what I could considering my talent. "I didn’t let myself be broken," I replied. I consider that my achievement. I also derived pleasure from football. It was ecstasy. I’d go onto the field and didn’t want the match to end. You know that a goalkeeper loses two kilograms per game — even if there are no shots on goal. Otherwise — four or five. Such strong psycho-emotional stress. And I enjoyed it. Over time, I started to view football through the lens of numbers.
— What is the specificity of these numbers?
— The numbers indicate that under proper biomechanics, a goalkeeper has no right to concede goals from outside the penalty area. Look at Georgiy Bushchan, who previously struggled with his Achilles. It's all due to him being overloaded. All because of improper walking. We set him up with an Achilles and movement biomechanics. After a week, everything passed.
— Which footballers have approached you with similar problems?
— Sasha Zubkov when he played in Mariupol. He long suffered with his shin. We set his movement biomechanics, and the problem disappeared. The same story with Nazar Musiyov from LNZ. We worked with Vitaliy Reyva and many others: Vlad Vashchuk, Taras Lucenko, Oleksandr Shovkovskyi. It’s a pity that clubs don’t show interest in this, and this phenomenon isn’t widespread.
— In short — how to set foot biomechanics?
— I created a corrector that externally resembles an insole. But if you don't bend the insole, you can crumple the corrector. It doesn’t have a foot fixation function; it doesn’t work instead of it, it moves it. The corrector is inserted into the shoe. For example, if you want to fall on the outer edge of your heel — it doesn’t allow that, repels from the pathological zone, shows the direction. It’s a simple but effective thing.
— You acquired knowledge and practical experience after finishing your career. But even then, it was clear that you weren’t planning to stay in sports?
— I was invited to the top leagues of Poland and Israel, to the second Italian division. For this, I needed to change my citizenship. I have no other homeland besides Ukraine. I want to live where I was born. And I advise everyone not to look for another fate. It was difficult to end with sport. I gained extra weight; all injuries started cropping up. Problems like these (bends a finger in another direction) were not even considered injuries. Not an open fracture, right?
— Are you currently engaged in orthopedics?
— Yes, I focused on foot biomechanics. This is a part of the body that is undervalued worldwide. In the human body, there is a joint-twin of the foot — this is the area of the wrist, which also consists of two large bones and 27 small bones. You have probably heard that the foot is often placed in the correct position with orthopedic insoles. Try to place the twin palm in the correct position. Strange, isn’t it? Why does the foot need so many bones?
— Clearly, you don't see the point in orthopedic insoles.
— Foot biomechanics consists of 5000 planes, dots, or positions. Which of these positions is correct? It simply doesn't exist. Then nature would have made just one bone — a flipper. Why the other 4999 points? I don’t endorse the term "flat feet." If we put something under the foot, we take away its ability to move freely. Imagine 20 police officers chasing you. On adrenaline, you could easily jump a two-meter fence. But if the foot is fixed, it is blocked and you can’t do anything. It becomes defective.
— What about children's orthopedic shoes?
— A child crawled on their knees, finally standing on their feet. Every child is born with a flat foot. They need to train their calf muscle, but we don’t provide that. Now all shoes are orthopedic and fix the foot. A child who just stood up has inherent muscle issues. And such shoes only worsen that. When a child starts crawling, we wouldn’t even put insoles on their palms?
— Do you apply your knowledge on your own body?
— Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to move with my worn-out joints. I relaxed my body and transferred all the load to my foot. There, I have enough bones, muscles, and tendons to relax my body and get support. Look at animals that have free bodies and only load the part of the body responsible for movement. Even huge hippos and elephants.
— Let’s return briefly to football for conclusion. In 1987, you moved from "Dynamo" to "Zorya." Let it be the first league, but you got stable playing time.
— I was long invited to "Dnipro" and Moscow "Dynamo." Moving from Kyiv was unrealistic since the club operated on the principle, "Let him not play for us, but he won’t play against us." Zorya was at the bottom of the standings, but I had a decent record. I played 20 matches, eight of which were "clean sheets." For a 19-year-old goalkeeper, that’s a good statistic. However, I didn’t feel trust from the "Zorya" coach Vadim Dobizha.
— According to the protocols, the coach frequently changed goalkeepers.
— I’ll give an example from the last round of the season when we went to Kemerovo. Kemerovo’s Kuzbass at the end of the championship beat everyone by a difference of 3-5 goals. All because of the field. They flooded the grass and turned it into an ice rink. Meanwhile, they picked appropriate shoes for themselves, while others fell into a trap. Before the match with "Kuzbass," Oleg Suslov had appendicitis, and veteran Alexander Tkachenko refused to play: "You wouldn’t send grandpa out on such a field, would you?" I had to play with an arm injury. We lost 1:5.
— Were you also caught in this trap?
— That was the only match with a fixed result I participated in. We maintained an agreed respectable score of 1:3 until the end of the match when veteran Vitaly Razdaev came on. The 41-year-old forward scored two goals with the phrase "These are my first goals of the season." Though 1:5 is still acceptable. In those conditions, we could’ve conceded ten.
— You gained more trust in "Sudnobudivnyk" under Gennadiy Lysenko.
— I was supposed to go to Mykhailo Fomenko in "Guria" from Lanchkhuti. But there was no sense in that since I was disqualified at the request of "Dynamo," where they didn’t forgive me for transferring to "Zorya." I tried to bypass that ban through the Uzbek Football Federation, went to Namangan, where they promised to lift the disqualification, and apply to "Pakhtakor." Then I headed to "Tavriya," but they couldn’t register me there either. Only through the second league "Sudnobudivnyk" did I return to football. At first glance, the second league is a weak level. But what a team it was: Morozov, Mashnin, Goryachev...
— After "Sudnobudivnyk," you didn’t return to a higher level.
— I also traveled to Zaporizhia "Metallurg," but Gennady Zhizdik couldn’t register me either. Then there was a trip to Poland, and afterward, the aforementioned "Kuban" and the end of my career. Representatives of Moscow "Torpedo" came to Krasnodar, who wanted to create competition for the Ukrainian goalkeeper Valery Vorobyov, but "Kuban" didn’t let me go.
— You crossed paths with many famous footballers and coaches. Who do you keep in touch with now?
— Only with those who come to me as patients. You know, you can’t be a little pregnant or a little dead. I’m now in another life and there's no space for attending football. But I continue to love football, primarily in front of the television screen. I analyzed my surrounding football journey and decided not to waste time. While I’m not late, I wanted to change my life. To start from zero in another field. My parents taught me to live in the moment. There is no tomorrow and no yesterday. There isn’t even a today. There is here and now. I have never betrayed football, and I will always love it.
Lyubomyr Kuzmyak
