Fyodor Fyodorovich Cherenkov (russian: Фёдор Фёдорович Черенко́в; 25 July 1959 – 4 October 2014) was a Soviet and Russian

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

midfielder who played for Spartak Moscow (1977–90 and 1991–94) and

Red Star Football Club Red Star Football Club, also known simply as Red Star (), is a French association football club founded in Paris in 1897, and is the fourth oldest French football club, after Standard AC of Paris, Le Havre AC and Girondins de Bordeaux. In the ...

(1990–91).

Playing career

Cherenkov made 34 appearances for the Soviet Union national team, scoring 12 goals. Although widely regarded by Spartak's fans as the team's best player ever, he was always dropped by the national team on the eve of several major tournaments, including two World Cups and a European Championship. For the time spent in Spartak he received the Club Loyalty Award in 1989. He was an incredible passer and was also great at shooting the ball and scored many goals. Cherenkov worked as a

coach Coach may refer to: Guidance/instruction * Coach (sport), a director of athletes' training and activities * Coaching, the practice of guiding an individual through a process ** Acting coach, a teacher who trains performers Transportation * Co ...

of Spartak's reserve team after retiring. He was awarded "The Attack Organizer" award in 1988 and 1989, as the most useful attack player. In his history of Spartak, Robert Edelman described him as "the longest-serving and most beloved of all Spartakovtsy":

A native Muscovite, Fiodr Cherenkov (b. 1959) was a product of Spartak's school. Navigating between midfield and forward, he played with an originality and eccentricity that endeared him to the public. Cherenkov was an enigmatic and fragile personality whose capacity for unexpected improvisation fit the Spartak image of the player as romantic artist. A true original, he was the embodiment of what many of Spartak's male Moscow supporters liked to believe about themselves. Lacking great speed but quick on his feet, small of stature but possessed of great guile, Cherenkov seemed to practice a new kind of masculinity, that of the urban trickster. By the time his Spartak career was over, he was the leading point producer (goal plus pass) in the team's history.

Life and personality

A 2021 profile on BBC Sport relates that Cherenkov was a kind and approachable "regular guy" who could not understand his own fame. He suffered several attacks of an unknown mental illness during his playing career, and missed important games because of it, but was "widely seen as the best Soviet footballer of the decade". His daughter Anastasia was born in 1980. He died in 2014, at age 55, after collapsing outside his home. An autopsy at a Moscow hospital found a brain tumour. The profile described him as a "football genius".

Honours

* 1979, 1987, 1989 – Soviet Top League * 1993 – Russian Premier League * 1994 – Russian Cup * 1983, 1989 –

Soviet Footballer of the Year The award Soviet Footballer of the Year was awarded to the best footballer of the Soviet Union from 1964 until 1991. The poll was conducted among journalists by the weekly sport newspaper ''Football'' (Football-Hockey). Each journalist named his o ...

* 1989 - Club Loyalty Award

References

External links

*
Fyodor Cherenkov's profile
at Spartak's official website *

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cherenkov, Fyodor 1959 births 2014 deaths Moscow State Mining University alumni Association football midfielders Soviet footballers Russian footballers Footballers from Moscow Russian football managers FC Spartak Moscow players Red Star F.C. players Olympic footballers of the Soviet Union Olympic bronze medalists for the Soviet Union Footballers at the 1980 Summer Olympics Soviet Union international footballers Soviet expatriate footballers Expatriate footballers in France Soviet expatriate sportspeople in France Soviet Top League players Ligue 2 players Russian Premier League players Olympic medalists in football Medalists at the 1980 Summer Olympics Deaths from brain cancer in Russia Burials in Troyekurovskoye Cemetery