Valeriy Lobanovskyi

Throughout his coaching career Lobanovskyi won 33 official trophies, becoming the second most decorated manager of all time (behind Alex Ferguson) and the most successful football manager of the 20th century.

He also holds several managerial records in Soviet football, including most Soviet Top League titles, most Soviet Cup wins (shared with Viktor Maslov) and most USSR Super Cup wins.

Lobanovskyi is the only manager to win a major European competition with an Eastern European club twice.

He is one of four managers to win the Cup Winners' Cup twice, and one of two (along with Nereo Rocco) to accomplish the feat with the same team.

Lobanovskyi has also won the Ukrainian championship five times out of five – an accomplishment not matched by any other manager.

Lobanovskyi has coached three Ballon d'Or winners — Oleh Blokhin, Ihor Bielanov and Andriy Shevchenko.

Valeriy Vasylyovych Lobanovskyi (Вале́рій Васи́льович Лобано́вський, ; 6 January 1939 – 13 May 2002) was а Ukrainian football player and manager.

Valeriy Lobanovskyi was born on 6 January 1939 in Kyiv.

His father was a factory worker, while his mother was a housewife.

He studied at the Kyiv school No.319 (now Valeriy Lobanovskyi Prospect, 146), where a plaque commemorating Lobanovskyi is installed and the school itself has been renamed in his honor.

In 1956 he joined the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute but later transferred to the Odesa Polytechnic Institute, where he graduated.

Lobanovskyi was a graduate of the Kyiv Football School No. 1 and the Football School of Youth in Kyiv (first coach — Mykola Chayka).

At the age of 18, Lobanovskyi was invited to the B-squad of Dynamo Kyiv, the most prominent Ukrainian football club at the time.

The Soviet press compared him to Brazilian forward Didi who regularly curved the ball in a similar way at the 1958 World Cup.

Teammates often praised Lobanovskyi for his unorthodox mindset and ability to use dribbling, which was unusual for such tall (187 cm) players.

His debut in the Soviet Top League came on 29 May 1959 against CSK MO Moscow.

Lobanovskyi became famous for his ability to accurately deliver curled balls from corner and free kicks (so-called curl) — often Lobanovskyi was able to score the goal directly from the corner.

He had regularly been working on these shots during training sessions, using Magnus effect and his own calculations.

Since 1960, Lobanovskyi was a full-fledged member of the starting line-up.

He was mostly used as a left winger, where he formed a duo with Valentyn Troyanovskyi.

That same year he became the club's top goalscorer with 13 goals.

In 1961, Dynamo Kyiv became the first football team not from Moscow to win USSR title, with Lobanovskyi scoring 10 goals.

He was regularly invited to the national team, but due to strong opposition (at the time there were many top-level left-wingers in Soviet Union like Mikheil Meskhi, Anatoli Ilyin and Galimzyan Khusainov) was able to play only two international games, against Austria and Poland.

Overall he spent seven years with the club before leaving in 1964 due to conflict with the coach Viktor Maslov.

Lobanovskyi finished his career after brief spells at Chornomorets Odesa and Shakhtar Donetsk.

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.

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.

Lobanovskyi and his team repeated their Cup Winners' Cup success in 1986, beating Atletico Madrid in the final.

With the Soviet Union national team, Lobanovskyi reached the finals of Euro 1988, losing to eventual winners the Netherlands, and won the bronze medal at the 1976 Summer Olympic Games.

After returning to Dynamo Kyiv in 1997 for the third time, Lobanovskyi led the team to another successful run in European competition.

In the first full season of his third spell, Dynamo reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League in 1998, topping a group that included FC Barcelona, Newcastle United and PSV Eindhoven, famously winning both games against Barcelona, 3–0 in Kyiv and 4–0 at Camp Nou.

The following season, Lobanovskyi and his team reached the semi-finals, where they were knocked out by Bayern Munich, with star striker Andriy Shevchenko finishing third in the 1999 Ballon d'Or poll.

Lobanovskyi is highly regarded due to his achievements as a coach and is widely considered one of the greatest managers of all time.

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.