Oleh Blokhin

Oleh Volodymyrovych Blokhin (Ukrainian: Оле́г Володи́мирович Блохі́н, Russian: Оле́г Влади́мирович Блохи́н; born 5 November 1952 in Kyiv) is a former Ukrainian football player and manager who is currently a free agent. Blokhin was formerly a standout striker for Dynamo Kyiv and the Soviet Union.
He holds the all-time top goalscorer record for both Dynamo Kyiv (266 goals) and the Soviet Union national team (42 goals), as well as being the overall top goalscorer in the history of the Soviet Top League (211 goals). He is also the only player to have been capped over 100 times for the Soviet Union and holds Dynamo's appearance record with 582 appearances during his 18-year spell at the club. With Dynamo, Blokhin won eight Soviet league titles, five national cups and two European Cup Winners' Cups. He also competed for the Soviet Union at the 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games and 1982 and 1986 FIFA World Cups. During his playing career he won the Soviet Footballer of the Year award three times and the Ukrainian Footballer of the Year award nine times (both records). In 1975, he was named European Footballer of the Year, winning the Ballon d'Or, becoming the second Soviet and the first Ukrainian player to achieve such a feat.
As a coach he has had two spells in charge of the Ukrainian national team, managing the team at the 2006 FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euro 2012.
In 2011, Blokhin, together with Igor Belanov and Vitaliy Starukhin were named as "the legends of Ukrainian football" at the Victory of Football awards.

Blokhin was born in Kiev, the capital of the Ukrainian SSR, in 1952 to a Russian father from Moscow and Ukrainian mother.

Playing

Blokhin was one of the greatest forwards in the world throughout the 1970s, hitting the target regularly through a period of great success at his hometown club Dynamo Kyiv and becoming the greatest goalscorer in the history of the Soviet League. Only the regime in the Soviet Union prevented him from moving abroad to play in Europe's strongest leagues. Normally a forward or winger, Blokhin was most renowned for possessing exceptional pace.

Blokhin played during most of his career for Dynamo Kyiv, becoming the USSR national championship's all-time leader and goalscorer with 211 goals, as well as making more appearances than any other player with 432 appearances. He won the championship 8 times. He led Dynamo to the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1975 and 1986, scoring a goal in each final. Blokhin is also the USSR national football team's most capped player with 112 caps, as well as their all-time leading goalscorer with 42 goals; he played in the 1982 and 1986 FIFA World Cups where he scored 1 goal in each. He was one of the first Soviet players to play abroad, signing for Austria's Vorwärts Steyr in 1988, he also played in Cyprus with Aris.

In 1979 Blokhin played couple of games for Ukraine at the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR.

Coaching

After retiring as a player, Blokhin coached Greek clubs Olympiacos (Under him they won the Greek Cup and the Greek Super Cup in 1992), PAOK, AEK Athens, and Ionikos.

He began serving as the head coach of the Ukrainian national team in September 2003. Under his leadership, Ukraine qualified for a major tournament for the first time as an independent nation, reaching the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany. Ukraine reached the quarter-finals of the tournament, losing to eventual champions Italy. Following the side's failure to reach UEFA Euro 2008, Blokhin stepped down as coach on 6 December 2007.

On 14 December 2007, he was named head coach of FC Moscow. The club finished 9th (from 16) and after the season ended Blokhin was fired from the club. At the end of the season, Blokhin announced that if he knew how things would go in FC Moscow, he would have never signed there. This was because the club released many important players without Blokhin's permission yet still had many high expectations. Others said that the reason Blokhin failed in FC Moscow was that he and the press didn't have a friendly relationship, and because of that the press was constantly attacking Blokhin and that damaged his status among the players.

On 21 April 2011 Blokhin was again appointed head coach of the Ukrainian national team. He led the team in UEFA Euro 2012 on home soil, beating Sweden but exiting at the group stage after defeats to France and England.

On 25 September 2012, Dynamo Kyiv signed Blokhin to lead the club for the next four years. His final matches in charge of Ukraine were World Cup qualifiers against Moldova and Montenegro in October 2012. Blokhin was dismissed as Dynamo's manager by the club's President Ihor Surkis on 17 April 2014 because of the "unsatisfactory results of the team". The day before, in a press conference after Dynamo had lost a match against Shakhtar Donetsk, Blokhin had already stated that he had decided to resign. Under his leadership Dynamo never qualified (a rare occasion for the club) for the UEFA Champions League and performed poorly in the UEFA Europa League. In his first year his team finished third in the Ukrainian Premier League and in his second year (when he was fired) Dynamo was seven points behind Ukrainian Premier League leaders Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk and Shakhtar Donetsk.

Club

• The statistics in USSR Cups and Europe is made under the scheme "autumn-spring" and enlisted in a year of start of tournaments

International

International goals

Score and results list Soviet Union's goal tally first.

#	Date	Venue	Opponent	Score	Result	Competition
1.	1972-07-16	Helsinki Olympic Stadium, Helsinki	Finland	1–0	1–1	Friendly
2.	1972-08-06	Råsunda Stadion, Stockholm	Sweden	4–3	4–4
3.	1972-09-01	Jahnstadion, Regensburg	Mexico	1–0	4–1	1972 Olympics
4.				2–0
5.				3–0
6.	1972-09-05	Rosenaustadion, Augsburg	Poland	1–0	1–2
7.	1972-09-08		Denmark	3–0	4–0
8.	1972-09-10	Olympic Stadium, Munich	East Germany	1–0	2–2
9.	1973-05-26	Central Lenin Stadium, Moscow	France	1–0	2–0	1972 World Cup qualifier
10.	1975-04-02	Kiev Central Stadium, Kyiv	Turkey	3–0	3–0	Euro 1976 qualifier
11.	1975-05-18		Republic of Ireland	1–0	2–1
12.	1976-03-10	Všešportový areál, Košice	Czechoslovakia	1–0	2–2	Friendly
13.	1976-03-24	Vasil Levski National Stadium, Sofia	Bulgaria	3–0	3–0
14.	1976-05-22	Kyiv Central Stadium, Kyiv	Czechoslovakia	2–2	2–2	Euro 1976 qualifier
15.	1976-07-23	Lansdowne Park, Ottawa	North Korea	3–0	3–0	1976 Olympics
16.	1977-03-23	JNA Stadium, Belgrade	Yugoslavia	1–0	4–2	Friendly
17.				3–1
18.	1977-09-07	Central Stadium, Volgograd	Poland	3–1	4–1
19.				4–1
20.	1978-02-26	Stade El Harti, Marrakech	Morocco	1–1	3–2
21.	1978-04-05	Hrazdan Stadium, Yerevan	Finland	4–0	10–2
22.				6–0
23.				9–1
24.	1978-05-14	Stadionul 23 August, Bucharest	Romania	1–0	1–0
25.	1978-10-05	Ankara 19 Mayıs Stadium, Ankara	Turkey	2–0	2–0
26.	1979-03-28	Lokomotiv Stadium, Simferopol	Bulgaria	1–0	3–1
27.	1980-08-27	Népstadion, Budapest	Hungary	1–1	4–1
28.	1981-09-23	Central Lenin Stadium, Moscow	Turkey	3–0	4–0	1982 World Cup qualifier
29.	1981-10-07	İzmir Atatürk Stadium, Izmir		2–0	3–0
30.				3–0
31.	1981-11-18	Dinamo Stadium, Tbilisi	Wales	2–0	3–0
32.	1981-11-29	Tehelné pole, Bratislava	Czechoslovakia	1–0	1–1
33.	1982-06-03	Råsunda Stadion, Stockholm	Sweden	1–0	1–1	Friendly
34.	1982-06-19	Estadio La Rosaleda, Málaga	New Zealand	2–0	3–0	1982 World Cup
35.	1983-04-13	Stade Olympique de la Pontaise, Lausanne	Switzerland	1–0	1–0	Friendly
36.	1983-05-17	Praterstadion, Vienna	Austria	2–1	2–2
37.	1983-06-01	Helsinki Olympic Stadium, Helsinki	Finland	1–0	1–0	Euro 1984 qualifier
38.	1983-07-26	Zentralstadion, Leipzig	East Germany	1–0	3–1	Friendly
39.	1983-10-09	Central Lenin Stadium, Moscow	Poland	2–0	2–0	Euro 1984 qualifier
40.	1984-08-19	Kirov Stadium, Leningrad	Mexico	3–0	3–0	Friendly
41.	1986-06-09	Estadio Sergio León Chavez, Irapuato	Canada	1–0	2–0	1986 World Cup
42.	1986-10-29	Lokomotiv Stadium, Simferopol	Norway	3–0	3–0	Euro 1988 qualifier

As of 1 November 2015

Team	Nat	From	To	Record					Achievement
				G	W	D	L	Win %
Olympiacos		06/1990	01/1993	x	x	x	x		League runner-up 1991, 1992, Cup holder 1992
P.A.O.K.		1993	1994	x	x	x	x
Ionikos		12/1994	02/1997	x	x	x	x
P.A.O.K.		1998	1998	x	x	x	x
AEK Athens		11/1998	05/1999	x	x	x	x
Ionikos		03/2000	01/2002	x	x	x	x
Ukraine		01/2003	12/2007	7001460000000000000♠46	7001210000000000000♠21	7001140000000000000♠14	7001110000000000000♠11	7001456500000000000♠45.65	Won qual.group for 2006, Reached 2006 World Cup quarter-finals
Moscow		12/2007	11/2008	7001300000000000000♠30	7000900000000000000♠9	7001110000000000000♠11	7001100000000000000♠10	7001300000000000000♠30.00
Ukraine		04/2011	2012	7001120000000000000♠12	7000500000000000000♠5	7000300000000000000♠3	7000400000000000000♠4	7001416700000000000♠41.67	Eliminated at group stage of Euro 2012
Dynamo Kyiv		09/2012	03/2014	7001580000000000000♠58	7001320000000000000♠32	7001100000000000000♠10	7001160000000000000♠16	7001551700000000000♠55.17

In 1998 Blokhin was elected to Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine's parliament) for Hromada. He joined Hromada while still being a member of the Communist Party of Ukraine. In 2002, Blokhin was elected to Verkhovna Rada for a second term. In October 2002, he joined the United Social Democratic Party of Ukraine.

In order to avoid controversy, Blokhin remained quiet during the Euromaidan events. However, he did anger some supporters when during the Euromaidan he made the following comment: "How do I react to the Euromaidan? Like a resident of Kiev. Why is it all happening in Kiev, and not in Donetsk or Dnepropetrovsk? Whatever is happening, life continues, and now problems are caused for simple residents - You can't get into town. It's wrong".

Blokhin's father, Vladimir Ivanovich Blokhin, is a native of Moscow, a veteran of the World War II, survivor of the Leningrad blockade, and a former Soviet law enforcement agent. Vladimir Blokhin later worked as a sports functionary for the Soviet Dynamo Society. Blokhin's mother Katerina Zakharivna (née Adamenko) is from a village in the Borodyanka Raion. She originally worked at a Kyiv sewing factory, but eventually discovered hidden athletic talents and became the Soviet champion in track and field as well as pentathlon. After retiring from sports, she became a staff member at one of Kyiv's universities.

Blokhin was married to Irina Deriugina, a top coach and former world champion in rhythmic gymnastics, but the couple divorced in the early 1990s. Blokhin and Deriugina have a daughter, singer Irina Olehivna Blokhina, who wrote and performed the Euro 2012 anthem.

Blokhin and his second wife, Angela, have two daughters, Hanna (born 2001) and Katerina (born 2002).

Club

Dynamo Kyiv

• Soviet Top League (8): 1971, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1980, 1981, 1985, 1986
• Soviet Cup (5): 1974, 1978, 1982, 1985, 1987
• USSR Super Cup: (3): 1981, 1986, 1987
• UEFA Cup Winners Cup (2): 1975, 1986
• UEFA Super Cup: 1975

Individual

• Merited Master of Sports (1975)
• Merited Coach of Ukraine (2005)
• Ballon d'Or: Winner in 1975
• Golden Foot: 2009, as a legend
• Soviet Footballer of the Year (3): 1973, 1974, 1975
• Ukrainian Footballer of the Year (9): 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981
• Soviet Top League top scorer (5): 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1977
• Soviet Top League All-Time Goals and Appearances Leader
• UEFA Cup Winners' Cup 1985–86 top scorer
• European Cup 1986–87 second place on top scorers list.
• USSR national football team All-Time Goals and Caps Leader
• Ukraine's Golden Player representative
• Inducted into Viktor Leonenko Hall of Fame in March 2012
• Club Loyalty Award: 1986

Ballon d'Or

• 1974 – 19th
• 1975 – 1st
• 1976 – 19th
• 1981 – 5th

• "Legends". Golden Foot. Retrieved 23 September 2015. 
• Cup Winners Cup Topscorers. Rsssf.com (18 December 2003). Retrieved 2 January 2011.
• European Champions' Cup 1986–87 – Details. Rsssf.com (17 January 2008). Retrieved 2 January 2011.
• [1] Archived 17 March 2005 at the Wayback Machine.