Valery Voronin. Midfielder on the chopping block

*оригинал на русском языке в сборнике "Валерий Воронин. Обрести Лицо"

               
                In loving memory of an outstanding Soviet footballer
                Dedicated to Valery Ivanovich Voronin

               
                5. A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed,
                some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down,
                and the fowls of the air devoured it.

                17. For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest;
                neither any thing hid, that shall not be known
                and come abroad.
                The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 8



AN OPEN SECRET

On 17 July 2009, the day of the second solar eclipse that month, Valery Voronin celebrated his 80th birthday. Metaphorically, that is. His fate had always been overshadowed by that of Eduard Streltsov, his famous teammate.

People in the know have guessed at those responsible, and at the reasons for the death of the disgraced midfielder, but due to a sense of solidarity with the authorities, they dare not voice their suspicions.



HE FELL, BY RUMOR SLANDERED

The myth dreamed up by necessity for Valery Voronin in order to mislead FIFA and prolong his life as an amateur Soviet football megastar, a status he wasn't supposed to have, was used against him by the authorities at an opportune moment and played a decisive role in discrediting him in the eyes of his fans,
giving the leadership every reason to remove him from the picture.

Indeed, the image of Voronin as a “Westerner”, “individualist”, “opportunist” and “playboy”, perpetuated by Soviet media, formed the public perception of him as almost an enemy of the socialist system. And its enemies, as we all know, are destroyed! First its enemies, and then the system itself, at the hands of its so-called “friends”.



BUREAUCRATS’ GAMES AND FIFA BLACKLISTS

Valery Voronin was sacrificed by Soviet officials for the sake of the corporate interests linking them with FIFA. The protectionist policy FIFA applied to the host countries of the World Cup and European Championship included offering them incentives in the form of medal
positions in competitions played at home.

To guarantee this, it was necessary to exclude the appearance at sporting events of football players from rival teams who played at a professional level in the national teams of their countries, and thus automatically became persona non grata for the hosts of the tournaments being held.

Through their own channels, FIFA’s leaders secretly brought the names of these players to the attention of the national football federations, who then took appropriate action to implement FIFA’s instructions.



THE STRAITJACKET OF PSEUDO-AMATEUR FOOTBALL

Valery Voronin openly advocated the introduction of professional status for Soviet footballers, because, unlike others, he understood that, with amateur status, the Soviet Union would not be able to compete on equal terms with the world's strongest national teams in major competitions, since this contradicted the FIFA doctrine according to which our “amateurs” could not, by definition,
be better than professionals.

For this reason, while allowing the Soviet national team to defeat teams in friendly games and do as they pleased in qualifying matches, in the final stage, FIFA nipped any attempts to break into the world of elite football at the expense of the pros firmly in the bud.

This is why we were consistently “unlucky” with the referees at the World Cup and European championships – more so at the former than the latter, but the end result was the same. Time and again they made fools of us.

However, despite this, the Soviet party leadership was categorically against the introduction of professional status for footballers, allegedly for ideological reasons, but actually as a result of purely pragmatic considerations.

In fact, the legal grey area occupied by the best Soviet players allowed the Sports Committee to gain considerable foreign exchange earnings from friendly matches against rich rivals with minimal expenditure. The players received a salary at their fictitious places of work in the enterprises and departments to which they were
assigned, which meant that all their material needs were met. In this way, they could be promised the moon but paid pennies.

But that’s not the point. The main problem was that the straitjacket that was pseudo-amateur football did not allow superstars of Streltsov’s or Voronin’s calibre to be squeezed into the narrow framework of Soviet football without causing significant damage to their sporting careers.

It was his understanding of these realities, rather than his much mythologized desire to be recognized in the West, that ground Voronin down. Of course, he wouldn't have minded playing for well-known professional clubs like Real Madrid or Inter Milan, which foreign promoters repeatedly asked him to join, but not if it meant the authorities making trouble
for his family.

And Voronin was under no illusions as to the certainty of this. In Soviet football, his talent was doomed to die, which is what ultimately happened.

Voronin gave no indication whatsoever of a lack of motivation after the World Cup in England, where he showed off his skills. When pedalling this story, the writing fellowship forgets that, in addition to Torpedo Moscow, which was unlikely to succeed in the championship any time soon due to the decision of top officials that it was not appropriate to have another metropolitan superclub, Voronin played for another team where, incidentally,
he continued, in spite of everything, to play well and enjoy constant success.

This team even made it to the final of the European Championship in Italy with his help, and then the World Cup. Was this not an incentive for him, a team player in the best sense of the word? No wonder he was so eager to go to Mexico.
And it’s no coincidence that his first question to doctors when he regained consciousness after his accident was: “Can I still play?” He lived and breathed the game. He couldn't survive without it.



ATHLETIC FEATS AND MIRACLES TO ORDER

I don’t know what else Valery Voronin would have had to do for the authorities to believe in his return to mainstream football and to give him the green light to continue to participate in the game.

It would seem that he recovered surprisingly quickly, returning to life after clinical death and getting back on the pitch. In his first official match after the accident, he scored for Torpedo’s second team in an away game
against Pakhtakor Tashkent. His play improved with every game, and his confidence increased. Back in the first team, he scored an incredible goal against the great Lev Yashin from a free kick, bypassing the wall and planting the ball in the far corner of the goal. But even this proved nothing to the higher-ups.

The fans were desperately hoping he would be sticking around. His participation in the match between the Torpedo substitutes and Zenith St. Petersburg brought 15,000 fans to the Kirov Stadium, all coming to see their favourite player.

We love to take pride in Eduard Streltsov’s seemingly unprecedented return to the game after a seven-year forced absence. But Voronin’s return was just as impressive, yet people prefer to keep their mouths shut about it. Could it be that Voronin, in the shadow of Streltsov’s achievements, pales in comparison
and is firmly entrenched in the minds of football fans as a loser?

What would it have cost the authorities to let this miracle take place? Absolutely nothing! But the people at the top thought that one top-class footballer – in this case Streltsov – was enough. And when the authorities had the gut feeling that Voronin was ready to be a leader again, they said: “Enough!”
Valentin Ivanov never let him out on the pitch again. And, having fought desperately for his place in the sun and failed to gain a foothold in the first team, Voronin, now almost entirely alone, was forced to hang up his hat without proving anything to anyone.



“I BROUGHT YOU INTO THIS WORLD, AND I'LL TAKE YOU OUT OF IT”

Valery Voronin suffered the same fate as the biblical Haman. The authorities decided that he who dared to encroach on their holy of holies, the meal ticket that was pseudo-amateur football, should be punished as an example to others, so nobody would ever think of doing something similar in the future.

Voronin’s sacrificial relationship to football prompted those at the top to use him as a sacrificial lamb, someone who could purify Soviet football in the eyes of FIFA’s leadership, by placing all the blame that should have been theirs to bear on Voronin alone.

Voronin was destroyed by the same state system of the USSR that created him. First, the system helped him ascend to the heights of glory, but then it cast him down from heaven to the sinful earth, cutting short his outstanding football career at its peak. It was that system which determined his fate, and which unilaterally decided, after his death, where he deserved to place in the hierarchy of Soviet football.
This naturally meant pushing Voronin down towards the middle of its roll of honour,

which, of course, does not remotely reflect the real state of affairs. The incontrovertible importance of Voronin to Russian football cannot be overestimated: it is mostly thanks to him, the backbone of the Soviet national team in 1966, that for the first time in its history the team made it into the global football elite,
taking a commendable fourth place in a contest against the best professional teams.

Zubkov Konstantin,
Kharkov,
2019.

Translated by Eclectic Translations

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