| Valeriy Vasylyovych Lobanovskyi (Ukrainian: Вале́рій Васи́льович Лобано́вський, pronounced ; 6 January 1939 – 13 May 2002) was а Soviet and Ukrainian football player and manager. He was Master of Sports of the USSR, Distinguished Coach of the USSR, and a laureate of the UEFA Order of Merit in Ruby (2002) and FIFA Order of Merit, the highest honour awarded by FIFA. In 2002 he was awarded the Hero of Ukraine award (posthumously), his nation's highest honour, for his contribution to Ukrainian football.
In 2008, Lobanovskyi was ranked 6th in Inter's list of the 100 Greatest Ukrainians following a nationwide poll that saw around 2.5 million people casting their votes.
Lobanovskyi is most famous for his spells managing FC Dynamo Kyiv and the USSR national football team. Lobanovskyi established Dynamo as the most dominant club in Soviet football in the 1970s and 1980s, winning the Soviet Top League eight times and the Soviet Cup six times in 16 years. In 1975 his Dynamo Kyiv team became the first side from the Soviet Union to win a major European trophy when they beat Hungarian side Ferencváros in the final of the Cup Winners' Cup. During the tournament, Dynamo Kyiv won eight games out of nine, resulting in a winning percentage of 88.88% – a record that stood for 45 years encompassing all of the major European club football competitions. Lobanovskyi and his team repeated their Cup Winners' Cup success in 1986, beating Atletico Madrid in the final. In both 1975 and 1986, two of Dynamo's players (Oleg Blokhin and Igor Belanov respectively) were also awarded the Ballon d'Or under his tutelage. During Lobanovskyi's first two stints, the team also reached the European Cup semi-finals in 1977 and 1987 and quarter-finals in 1976, 1982 and 1983. Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License - Full article |
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