Portugal had difficult decade and in the middle of it football was at its shakiest. Since long hairs were almost sure sign of greatness during the 1970s, Portuguese had to be the greatest of all, for they sported the wildest hairs in Europe. Alas, it not so and the look was more related to the ‘Carnation Revolution’, which ended the enormously long dictatorial rule of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar and his successor (1932-1974), than to purely football matters. As a whole, Portuguese football was rapidly declining in the early 70s, but also there was a shift of power. The shift was not yet significant enough, but it was detectable already: it was the end of Lisbon’s dominance and reshaping of rivalries. Traditionally, national football was dictated by ‘the Big Three’ – by 1975 it was no longer clear which the 3th club was: Benfica and Sporting surely, but FC Porto or Os Belenenses? Belenenses, the third ranking club of Lisbon, was surely declining – they were the most successful club once upon a time, but it was already ancient story, which ended in 1933. Their last title was in 1946, but they were still maintaining relatively strong position, finishing 6th in 1974-75. As for Sporting, they remained technically the number 2 club in terms of success, still managed to win titles, and finished 3rd this year. Benfica won the championship – who else? – so it looked like the status quo remained. But two clubs from Porto were edging Lisbon: Boavista finished 4th and FC Porto – 2nd. This city’s football was on the rise, changing the picture: traditionally the big derby was ‘the people’ – Sporting – against ‘the government and the rich’ – Benfica. A Lisbon derby. By 1975 it was more like ‘the industrious province, which makes money, only to be robbed from the fruits of hard labour by the snobbish bureaucrats in the capital’ – FC Porto – against these very loots – Benfica. Sporting fans may disagree, but at least for Benfica ‘the Dragons’, as FC Porto are nicknamed, were already bigger challenge and bigger trouble. FC Porto was not strong enough yet – they won their last title (which equaled them with Os Belenenses) in the distant 1959 – but were moving consistently up.
Benfica – FC Porto: Benfica’s libero Humberto tries to score between desperate looking Dragons Tibi and Marco Durelio. By names, Benfica still had advantage.
Or did it have advantage? FC Porto had the great Peruvian Teofilo Cubillas (far right) in his squad, freshly acquired from Switzerland. Well… still Benfica rules, for Cubillas is defending.
But even this derby was mostly for local consumption – may be great, but unimpressive by European standards… no Portuguese team, club or national formation – was noticeable outside the state’s borders. If the clubs on top of the table were familiar, it was more to say about the general weakness of Portuguese football at the time: declining giants, but the rest of the league was even weaker, so the giants continued to stay on top. So far.

Traditionally, Yugoslavia was regarded for playing the best domestic football in Eastern Europe, but 1974-75 was hardly great. The hangover after the good performance at the 1974 World Cup took its tall. Just a year ago the image of Yugoslavian football was thrilling dribbling like:
Danilo Popivoda (middle, with the green shirt of Olimpija Ljubljana), or exciting moments from new derbies, like Hajduk (Split) – Velez (Mostar):
Halilhodzic (red shirt, Velez) scores in the net of Meskovic of Hajduk.
A great duel in front of Velez’s net: Branko Oblak (Hajduk) kicks spectacularly, but is denied by Velez goalie and captain Enver Maric. In the next moment this was repeated. Thrill was the word in 1973-74.
1974-75 was perhaps best illustrated by this moment from the big derby Crvena zvezda – Partizan:
Now, classic derbies were more often war than football, but in the new season it was a parody: complaints and simulations. Players spent long time pretending to be dead. Was football dead? Or was it asleep?
There were some good reason for the decline: Partizan was still rebuilding and played small role in the first half of the 1970s. After the World Cup large number of strong players were permitted to play professionally abroad – Crvena zvezda suffered most from the exodus and needed time to build new team. Others either suffered from exodus of stars or felt victims of the rebuilding of the ‘grand’ clubs, losing promising players to them. Velez (Mostar0 was raising, it is true, but they never had the means for recruiting stars and depended on their own production. It was good at the moment, but still limited in numbers, so the club was hardly championship contender. There was one more reason - organizational. There was no cup tournament in 1975. Two years back Yugoslavia organized a single year cup tournament and now was going back to the usual fall-spring structure. The transition was difficult: there was no time to stage 1975 cup competition – the spring was too short, and in the fall the 1975-76 tournament was beginning. One tournament less further diminished excitement. At the end, it was weak year… low scoring – the best average was 1.82 goals per match, achieved by Velez (Mostar). Ties dominated the championship – only three, out of 18 participants, ended with less than 10 ties. The only really attack-oriented club was Hajduk (Split) – they finished with 20 wins. The next best was 16 wins in 34 games – hardly great: it is less than 50%!
Hajduk were champions and the only brightness this year. They require a more detailed story.
By itself, the victory of Hajduk was nothing unusual – its already 8th title for the clun, which is traditionally strong – they had been good in the first half of the century and continued to be strong in Communist Yugoslavia. Why? May be because they were from small provincial town – unlike the old clubs of Zagreb, they were not destroyed by the Communists. May be taught unimportant. The other reason was that Yugoslav football was not as carnivorous as in the ‘proper’ East Europe – Crvena zvezda and Partizan took a lot of provincial players, yet, never to the extend done elsewhere, where two or three central clubs dominated the whole country. Of course, Yugoslavia was blessed with plenty of good footballers and the Belgrade clubs had more than enough homegrown talent as well, so there was no great need to pillage everybody else all the time. Dynamo (Zagreb) did not pillage Hajduk either – may be they not even permitted to use the rest of Croatia as ‘farm clubs’ for fear of nationalism: Tito’s Yugoslavia severely suppressed local nationalism. In such environment Hajduk remained strong and the 1970s were their best decade. By then it was not only the luck of having talented players, but a system was developed, permitting the club to profit and to remain strong at the same time: its youth system was great, the aim was to produce and sell abroad great players, to invest the money in better facilities and again in the youth system, and the produce more young players of high caliber. The club carefully controlled the sales, so to maintain constantly strong squad – in fact, only one player left without club’s permission during the 1970s: Slavisa Zungul, who went to USA and played largely indoor football (Zungul became indoor soccer legend, nicknamed ‘Lord of All Indoors’, but was largely lost to the ‘big’ football after he went to USA in 1977. He ended with only 14 games for Yugoslavia and is hardly remembered in Europe today. Actually, he was banned by FIFA after Yugoslavian complaint, and would not play outdoor football in legitimate league. As for his talent, consider this: he left Hajduk at 23 years of age – and he scored 176 goals for his former club by that time! In about 5 seasons. But enough of him.)
Hajduk followed a concept similar to the practice of Ajax (Amsterdam): producing great players; selling them; investing the money into the youth system; developing new crop. It worked! The club was both winning and profiting – and 1975 brought one more title.
Tomislav Ivic was still coaching them and what a squad he had! 10 national players, quite young all of them. Branko Oblak was already sold to Schalke-04 and making strong impression in the Bundesliga, but Hajduk was not negatively affected by his departure: the club had great and competitive ‘long’ squad. Rizah Meskovic and Ivan Buljan were the next in line for playing abroad, and already they had ‘reserves’ like Katalinic (already a starter between the goalposts) and Dzoni (already with few games for the national team of Yugoslavia). Most of the players were homegrown – the club rarely took players from outside its own system, but whoever they took, they really flourished in Hajduk: Oblak, a Slovenian, and Meskovic, a Bosnian, were point in case. And the biggest thing about Hajduk was that they were fun to watch, playing open, fast, attacking football. Trully amazing club.

Krylya Sovetov were dwarfs when compared even to the likes of Dynamo (Minsk).
The ‘Soviet Wings’ from Kyubyshev (which is now restored to its original name – Samara) were relatively young club – founded in 1942. In the midst of Second World War, that is - which explains why their first official match happened in 1944. After the end of the war they played regularly in the First Division, but without any success – their highest achievement was in 1951, when they finished 4th. Most of the time they played hide and seek with relegation, eventually losing the game, but in 1969 they lost in a significant way – if before ‘the Rats’ were able to return quickly, this time they remained in the Second Division for 6 years. Hardly a surprise: during their whole history the club was small and with downward destiny because of that. Their return to First Division was viewed skeptically.
The Rats in 1975: first row, left to right: B. Starukhin, V. Shelenkov, V. Panfilov, V. Dzyuba, S. Kraev, V. Alekasanov, A. Blokhin, V. Filippov.
Middle: I. Gorshkov – assistant coach, R. Aryapov – captain, G. Fridlyand – team’s boss.
Third row: V. Solovyev – assistant coach, S. Yarkin – masseur, V. Zhupikov, G. Platonov, A. Fetissov, V. Kopaev, Yu. Devkalionov – administrator, A. Zabiyako, A. Kupriyanov, A. Chudinov, E. Nazarov, V. Taran, Yu. Kutuzov – team’s doctor, V. Kirsh – coach.
Well, compared to this squad, Dynamo (Minsk) was full of stars, for these guys are really anonymous. ‘Survival’ is only aim coming to mind, yet, survival was to be a miracle. Actually, promotion to First Division was a miracle with team like this one… perhaps even their fans did not see them playing in the First Division longer than a season.

If Lokomotiv shined at the beginning of the year, the happy names at the end were different: Dynamo (Minsk) and Krylya Sovetov (Kuybyshev) finished first and second in the Second Division and moved up to the First. Good for them, yet, little to brag about.
Neither club was a fresh name – both were rather returnees from ‘exile’.
The Belarussian club was old by Soviet standards - founded in 1927 – and normally played premier league football. The best way to describe it is ‘modest’ – their highest achievements were finishing at 3rd place twice, in 1954 and 1963, and reaching the Cup final once, in 1965. Winning was not their forte and eventually Dynamo entered the slippery slopes at the bottom of the league, sometimes surviving, sometimes not and going down to the Second Division. Now they were returning after one year spell in the lower regions, but did not look candidates for greatness at all.
First row, left to right: S. Korbut, V. Kurnev, G. Voronin, A. Baydachny, I. Grigoriev, B. Belous, A. Grebnev, S. Borovsky.
Second row: L. Adamov – assistant coach, A. Gorbylev – chief of the team, E. Goryansky – coach, M. Vergeenko, V. Girko, I. Timofeev, A. Prokopenko, A. Bogovik – captain, V. Shvetzov, V. Slovak, A. Mosin, G. Bortkevich – team’s doctor.
Second division clubs hardly possess famous players and this squad is no exemption. Their coach Evgeny Goryansky is perhaps the biggest name here, but Anatoly Baydachny must be mentioned as well – not long ago he was playing for Dynamo (Moscow) and the national team. However, it is not his own plummeting interesting here, but the fate of clubs like his current one. As all clubs named ‘Dynamo’, the Minsk version was part of the large pyramid ‘Dynamo Sports Society’, belonging to the Ministry of the Interior (KGB and the regular Police). Dynamo (Moscow) was the very top of it, but down the ranks was no so simple: normally, the top was able to get whatever they wanted, the rest of the pyramid existing largely as a supplier. But USSR was a federal state and some clubs – Dynamo (Kiev) as a prime example – were increasingly seen as a representatives of their republics, with heavy support and scheming coming from local Party quarters. Thus, Kiev was not simply Dynamo (Moscow) helper. To a point, Dynamo (Minsk) was not either, but only to a point, for it was commandeered by Belarussian boss of Police, and not by the Communist Party boss, and remained closer to the bosom of the ‘mother club’. Closeness is both a blessing and a curse: Minsk was calling up for help and receiving some – players, no longer needed in Moscow. Baydachny arrived this way and he was soon followed by others. But it was not one-way road - if Dynamo (Moscow) needed some player from Minsk, they just got it. There was nothing to negotiate – it was simply generals ordering colonels, a routine procedure not open for discussion. To evaluate the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ about clubs like Dynamo (Minsk) is almost impossible: there are players, who are not good enough for big clubs, but become key figures in smaller ones. Some players dispatched from Moscow were of this kind and Minsk benefited from them. But, in general, a big club ‘helps’ a smaller one only with unneeded players, meaning they are not really good anyway for one or another reason (permanently injured, out of form, aging, undisciplined, lazy, etc.) A lot of ‘dead meet’ arrived to Minsk as well. But pyramid structures are dangerous by definition: it is something like a system of farm-clubs in North American sports. Whoever the ‘real’ club needs immediately moves to the ‘centre’ – which permanently prevents smaller clubs from building strong teams and performing with consistency. At the end, such clubs even stop developing homegrown talent, for there is no point – the top will get it immediately. It is true that Belarus did not breed a lot of talented players, and it is true that Minsk mostly benefited from players sent from Moscow, but it seems also true that the club had meager existence because of its structural subordination. Up they went in 1975… kind of.

In the beginning of 1975 the first – I think it was the first – indoor football tournament in USSR was organized by the weekly newspaper ‘Nedelya’. It was not futsal, for there was no futsal yet as such, but close to ice-hockey in terms of rules and staging of pitch. Moscow clubs participated and the winner was surprising: Lokomotiv. The smallest Moscow club at the time and also the weakest, meandearing between First and Second Division of late. It was novelty tournament and that is the very reason for mentioning it here. Besides, it was the only tournament Lokomotiv won for many, many years… actually, until the 1990s.
Here are the happy winners.
And another photo of them, this time with names: Front, left to right: Vladimir Peregontzev, Nikolay Maslov, Zoltan Miles - captain, Anatoly Piskunov, Yury Spiridonov, Boris Kogut
Back: Vladimir Malinin, Nikolay Kalaychev, Genady Hizun, Nikolay Zudin, Anatoly Novikov, David Pais, Sergey Ryumin, Yury Ryzhov, Aleksander Trusov.
Nobody famous in the squad – Lokomotiv depended on leftovers from the big clubs – but one player should be mentioned: David Pais. As the name suggests, he was Spanish. What, Spaniards in Soviet clubs? Yes, there were, although most of them, like Pais, were born in USSR – children of Spanish Communists, who took refuge in USSR at the end of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. Pais was not the only Iberian playing Soviet football, but the ‘cradle’ of Spaniards was not Lokomotiv – it was Torpedo (Moscow).

Moscow was out of the Cup, where two recent champions competed: Zarya (Voroshilovgrad) and Ararat (Erevan), correspondingly USSR champions of 1972 and 1973. Zarya is a difficult club to evaluate: on one hand is their tainted reputation – it is widely accepted now that they bribed their way to the title in 1972. ‘Bribed’ is perhaps incorrect word: the club itself was at least partially a pawn. The key figure was the Communist Party boss of Voroshilovgrad, who was ambitious and influential. He had championship ambition and pull his weight via Party channels to achieve it. Naturally, the club was not just an innocent victim. But who is reliable source? There was no investigation, the title is recognized to this very day, Zarya’s coach German Zonin still insists that his team won fairly, and there is a choir of former sportsmen singing praise to the ancient Party Secretary ‘who really cared for sports’. Yet, Zonin departed rather quickly after winning the title – rumor says because he wanted ‘to stay away from devil’s temptation’. The squad itself wasn’t much and after the best players were moved to mightier clubs, it was getting increasingly weaker and dropping down and close to relegation zone. But cup tournament have their own logic and it is not unusual smaller and weaker clubs to perform well: Zarya reached – and lost – the final in 1974 and went all the way to the final in 1975. May be they were not that bad? May be they were really a cup club? Or may be it was easier to bribe in the Cup tournaments? Whatever it was, Zarya lost the final 1-2.
Ararat were the happy winners and their story is different – nobody ever accused them of corruption when winning their single title. Ararat was looked with caution because of nationalism – the whole Republic of Armenia celebrated the title as nationalist victory, people shouted ‘Armenia’, not ‘Ararat’. Politically suspect… but it was not politics to end Ararat. It was the very state of football: Armenian football was not great before and was not great after the short period from 1970-76. The winning squad was practically a single lucky fenomenon of about 20 good players of the same age. They raised out of nowhere, won, remained stable as long as they played, and after them – back to lowly existence. And these players were only relatively good, for nobody except the elegant midfielder Andreasyan established himself in the national team. Bigger clubs can replace aging players with new talent, but Ararat were ‘republican’ club; the republic was small and short of talent, yet, it was almost impossible to get players from elsewhere – Ararat remained practically an ethnic club, which effectively ended their short great period – there were no more talented Armenians. But 1975 was still a good year – winning their second Cup!
First row, left to right: Bagdasaryan, A. Minasyan (18), N. Petrosyan (16), S. Petrosyan (19), E. Markarov (9), S. Martirosyan (12), H. Ovanesyan (17), S. Gevorkyan (2).
Middle: A. Abramyan – assistant coach, Victor Maslov – coach, N. Mesropyan (5), N. Kazaryan (11), S. Bondarenko (7), O. Zanazanyan (10), S. Pogosyan (13), L. Ishtoyan (8), S. Israelyan – administrator, L. Melikyan – masseur.
Third row: V. Ordyan – team doctor, A. Mirzoyan (4), G. Ovanesyan, A. Abramyan (1), N. Demirchyan (20), A. Arutyunyan (14), A. Kovalenko (15), A. Andreasyan (6), A. Sarkisyan (3).
If there was anything new when compared to the champion squad of two years ago, it is only the coach – Nikita Simonyan made them champions and cup winners in 1973; now it was Victor Maslov. One big name replaced with another, and so far – so good. Alas, it will be so far and no farther.

Dynamo (Moscow) finished third, but it was hardly a success – rather, the opposite: an example of the increasing weakness of Moscow clubs.
Second row, left to right: A. Sevidov – coach, Yu. Gavrilov (17), A. Petrushin (4), A. Bubnov (15), A. Novikov (25), N. Gontar (21), V. Pilguy (1), V. Zenkov, A. Yakubik (18), O. Dolmatov (8), I. Mozer – assistant coach.
First row: A. Makhovikov (10), G. Evryuzhikhin (11), A. Shepel (28), V. Pavlenko (9), M. Gershkovich (7), V. Kozlov (19), S. Nikulin (3).
Now, the names are impressive: Sevidov had enourmous reputation as a coach and at least 12 players played for the national team (in different years): Gavrilov, Bubnov, Novikov, Gontar, Pilguy, Dolmatov, Evryuzhikhin, Shepel, Gershkovich, Nikulin, Kozinkevich (not on the picture), may be even others as well. But… nobody really established himself as a national player and none became a big star. Perhaps the most famous became Gavrilov and Bubnov, but both played for the national team many years later and in the case of Gavrilov, not as Dynamo’s player, but Spartak’s. Some ominous pattern already occurred: very promising players, hailed as ‘the next big thing’, routinely faded quickly, their development stopped well before reaching expected levels. A team better shining as names, not on the pitch. And this was true already for revered Sevidov, so it was hard to believe that he would make great team – he was already belonging to the past. By 1975 some ‘big promises’ were already down and out – Baydachny, for instance, was playing for Dynamo (Minsk) in the Second Division. The best example of the current squad were Shepel and Pavlenko – Anatoly Shepel was big hit in 1972, when he scored fantastic number of goals in the Second Division and helped Chernomoretz (Odessa) to winning a promotion. Dynamo (Kiev) snatched him and he was included in the national team. Great future was forecasted… Shepel was quickly benched in Kiev and with tainted reputation went to Dynamo (Moscow). Where impressed nobody and did not last long. Vadim Pavlenko, only 19 years old, burst in 1974, earning starting place in Dynamo and finishing among the top goalscorers of the season. No doubt, he was destined for stardom… but in 1975 he was mediocrity and worse in the following seasons. Whether homegrown, or recruited from elsewhere, Dynamo players were the same: a few promising seasons and then instead of becoming stars, they were going rapidly downhill. And it was not only Dynamo, but all Moscow clubs, which in turn made them unattractive for ambitious players, and increasingly Moscow clubs were seen as something like cash-cow for aging and over-the-hill players. By 1975 the glory years of Moscow football appeared finished and gone.