Igor Belanov goes to war
Former Soviet star fights Russia
4/7/2022 12:03 p.m
In the 1980s, Igor Belanov is one of the biggest stars in world football. In 1986 he was named European Footballer of the Year. In 1989 he became the first Soviet player in the Bundesliga. There he finishes his career. At 61, he is now fighting for Ukraine against Russia.
Ukrainian sports stars also take part in the fight against the Russian army. According to Ukrainian media reports, ex-Bundesliga player Igor Belanov, Europe’s footballer of the year in 1986, has registered with the local defense forces in his hometown of Odessa. The 61-year-old appeared with an assault rifle in a position secured with sandbags in the southern Ukrainian port city. Odessa is considered a target for Russian forces to cut off Ukraine’s access to the sea.
At the beginning of March, the former striker from Borussia Mönchengladbach and Eintracht Braunschweig had already campaigned for an end to the war. “I beg you to stop the bloodshed of our people immediately!” he wrote on Facebook. Ukrainian cities turned into ruins. “Our grandfathers and fathers didn’t build them for fighting, but for happy people to live there!” he wrote more than a month ago.
Belanov began his career with teams in Odessa and later played for the capital’s Dynamo Kyiv club. In the final of the European Championship in 1988 he lost with the Soviet Union against the Netherlands (0:2) and missed a penalty. In 1989 he was the first Soviet international to switch to the Bundesliga. After a year and a half in Mönchengladbach, he played for the second division team Braunschweig from 1991.
Other top Ukrainian athletes also fight in the army. The biathlete Dmytro Pidrutschnji made a prominent appearance. The former captain of the national soccer team and former Bayern professional Anatoly Tymoshchuk, on the other hand, was banned for life by his home country – after the war began, he refused to give up his job as assistant coach at the top Russian club Zenit St. Petersburg and also did not speak out against the war .