Andrey Kolesnikov On the 100th anniversary of countless legends Vsevolod Bobrov 06.12.2022, 08:04

It’s rare to say about anyone that he literally went through fire and water. In infancy, Seva Bobrov was saved from a fire, in childhood – from water when she fell into a hole and was pulled out by her older brother. There is nothing to say about copper pipes – nationwide fame was enormous, so Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote that Bobrov “played in the memory of the people.” An idol sometimes seems like someone close to every citizen of the country, because the relationship with him is a stadium: “Beaver, come on!”

But when such an attitude was transferred to the conditions of everyday life, Vsevolod Mikhailovich forced them to keep their distance in the most sincere way possible – punching them in the face. Without hesitation – for the call “Beaver” from a stranger. In general, for a native of team sports – football and hockey, where decisions have to be made at lightning speed, as well as confrontationally, such a quick reaction is natural: Bobrov once flagged a man who helped his wife in a restaurant. zip up his boots and at his own request.

The sharpness and speed of backlash cost him his coaching career in hockey: after winning his second consecutive world title in Helsinki in 1974, he was fired from his national team coaching post for swearing at one of his naming staff. Coaches were idols of millions, like athletes, but they were also people who were not taken into account by sports and political authorities, easily controlling the fate of the great – Anatoly Tarasov, Bobrov’s antipode and eternal rival, was no exception to the rule. Like Tarasov’s student Konstantin Loktev, like Boris Kulagin and others.

It seems that Bobrov is a very light type of person, and the lightness is due to a unique ability defined by the phrase “Bobrov’s breakthrough”. It could be played in today’s NHL, with such a gift manifested in Russian hockey that it succeeded.

Lucky on the verge of foul. 27-year-old Bobrov was late for the plane with players from the VVS MVO team, the favorite mastermind of Vasily Stalin, who was going to the game with the Chelyabinsk Dzerzhinets. Due to bad weather conditions and a poorly organized landing, the plane crashed at Koltsovo airport in Sverdlovsk. The tragedy was not reported, although many famous players, including Tarasov’s brother Yuri, Zdenek Zikmund (also known as a tennis player, six-time USSR champion in doubles with Nikolai Ozerov), Yuri Zhiburtovich, Latvian hockey died in a plane crash. Vasily Stalin – goalkeeper Harius Mellups and defender Robert Shulmanis, the stars he took to his team. (It is interesting that in those days the brothers often played hockey – the same Shulmanis, Zhiburtovichi, Tarasovs, later, for example, in world hockey, the Mayorovs, the Golikovs – the Dryden brothers, Esposito, Shtyasny, Goliks; Bobrov’s older brother, let’s say, was no less talented.)

In fact, this is one of the few partially unexplained stories in the biography of Bobrov, who once again escaped accidental death. The alarm clock that did not ring on time – the version of Vsevolod Mikhailovich himself – was always questioned, it was overgrown with a number of rumors and legends, especially given the feminine love of the sports hero. However, it is this version that seems most plausible – why not oversleep (or violator) of the regime?

Bobrov’s lightness is also his attitude to life, to the game and to coaching. The creator of hockey theories and motivating players with methods, including the ideological pumping of Anatoly Tarasov, the plowman ironically called his antipode “Trotsky”. Bobrov was probably referring to Tarasov’s highly systematic and theoretical approach to hockey. Vsevolod Mikhailovich built the training process and approach to athletes differently, moreover, this does not mean that he is a poor tactician: all the photos and images of the chronicle with him are tactical exercises with players. Sometimes Bobrov motivated athletes with a personal example: there is a story that Bobrov was annoyed by the stick of hockey players, put the board with a narrow gap almost the entire width of the goal, and began to direct the puck there from a long distance. distance – to the amazement of the ward players. The psychological effect was no less powerful than the pumping and brutal physical exercises of Tarasov.

Bobrov’s relation to ideology was also simpler: Vasily Stalin invested in him (although Bobrov managed to transfer (!) to his friend a conspiracy donated by the leader’s son in Usovo), but these were not relations between a leader and a vassal. , but an art patron and a star. Its players did not sing in the dressing room of the International. After the defeat of the USSR national team to the Canadian team in the last match of the 1972 Super Series, Bobrov recognized other motivating elements, which became clear from his legendary phrase: “Oh, friends, your Volga was crying.” Bobrov himself had a Volga number 1111 MOSHCH, which amused him greatly.

It so happened that Tarasov (along with Arkady Chernyshev, who was unfairly cast into the background for coaching Dynamo, not CSKA, which formed the basis of the national team) formed the model of Soviet hockey, the national team in the 1960s. Who did not know defeat at the world championships from 1963 to 1971. The first misfire in the national team took place in 1972, when the team was led by Bobrov. But it was he who created the national team of the 1970s. And he won the victory of the first coach, who “dispelled the myth of the invincibility of Canadian professionals” in the 1972 Super Series, the main event of the 20th century, stubbornly not systematically, but perhaps easily achieved again.
Surprisingly, this debut with the NHL team on September 2, 1972 rhymes with the fact that player Bobrov – captain of the winning USSR team – and against Canada, albeit semi-amateur, won his first World Cup. Soviet Union team in Sweden in 1954. Those two years – 1954 and 1972 – became trademarks of player Bobrov and coach Bobrov.

Another success of Bobrov is connected with his confrontation with Tarasov. He took Spartak under the coaching leadership in 1964. In 1967, Bobrov managed to break the monopoly of Tarasov’s CSKA: Spartak became the champion of the country, defeating the champion of the USSR 13 times. Bobrov emerged as a well-balanced team in terms of age as well. And these are the Mayorov brothers, Starshinov, Yakushev, Shadrin, Zimin, goalkeeper Singer.

In the same year, Bobrov suddenly went to CSKA football coaching for the colonel’s shoulder straps, that is, for a solid and large military pension in the future. In any case, this became the dominant version in this story as mysterious as the case of the 1950’s when the alarm clock didn’t go off. However, it was also said that this “call” for a well-provided military sport was inspired by Tarasov, who “removed” a boring and very successful opponent. But now who will understand … Bobrov, for unknown reasons, considered football a smarter game than hockey, but he did not take part in football as a coach (unlike his playing career).

Among the achievements of Vsevolod Mikhailovich is the restoration of the most famous Soviet hockey trio, divided by Tarasov: Mikhailov – Petrov – Kharlamov. In 1973, under the leadership of Bobrov, the USSR national team triumphantly won the Moscow World Championship, and the trio scored an incredible 86 points (according to the goal + pass system). It was more difficult in Helsinki in 1974. And the vertical take-off of the hockey coach Bobrov was interrupted. He returned to football – and failed again. The second time for the biography of Bobrov was penalized with football. Failure in football would also put an end to the career of Tarasov, a rival and neighbor in the Stalinist house on Alabyan Street.

With great rams, the Soviet government broke up roughly and abruptly, unforgiving of defeats. Since sport is a war, the Soviet people could not lose in it. When the Soviet football team with Bobrov, the lead star, lost to the Yugoslavs in 1952, which meant Stalin’s loss to Josip Tito, the main team of the CDSA team was disbanded and coach Boris Arkadyev was fired. In such a system, players and coaches only perform, and even the smallest nomenklatura figure is a military leader. And here’s another mystery story: how Bobrov was filmed in 1974. And that was actually the end of his career – just over 50 years old! (That’s when the military pension, earned at the expense of concessions in 1967, came in handy.) Bobrov was rumored to have pushed a responsible worker out of the locker room door, who had “helped” him during the match with the Czechs, giving him advice. That fateful 1974 World Cup in Helsinki resulted in the defeat of the USSR national team with a score of 2:7 (our second match with the Czechs won 3:1). He allegedly sent three letters from the same well-wishers during a break in the same game – an instructor of the Central Committee propaganda department (just one thing!) Nikolai Nemeshaev, a former ski races referee – during a break in the same game. This is – sports officer Valentin Sych, during a difficult conversation with his team, asked the intruder to close the door to the locker room. Then they made up legends that Bobrov insulted the USSR ambassador to Finland at a reception on the occasion of the victory of the Soviet team in the same tournament.

They said that Sych, the head of the sports games department of the USSR Sports Committee, who in the 1990s would become the head of the Russian Hockey Federation, did not like him. He could also play a key role in the “breakdown” of Tarasov’s national team coaches in 1972 – just at the time when Anatoly Vladimirovich was replaced by Vsevolod Mikhailovich. Before the Nomenklatura, the enemies Bobrov and Tarasov turned out to be equal. The anger and mastery love of the master in their biographies was enough.

Bobrov played at different numbers throughout his career, usually under #9. However, the number 7 had a special meaning for him. In any case, it turns out to be very objective. At least in hockey. The victorious match in the match of the USSR national team against the Canadians in 1954 – the score was 7:2. The first game with the NHL in 1972 was a 7-3 score. The victory of Bobrovsky “Spartak” over CSKA in 1967 – a score of 7:3.

And Bobrov died at the age of 56 in 1979, when the generations of both players and coaches were changed again in his favorite sport. A blood clot broke off during full training. And although he died in the hospital, and not on the football field, there was still a feeling of death “on the stage”, where his bright, easy and fast life flowed from the breakthroughs of the actor Bobrov to breakthrough and significant. victories in the history of the country and sports.

The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.