I have missed innumerable opportunities to research and write about Valerij, Anatoli, Oleh and Mykhailo and their experiences at Dynamo Kiev.
I watched the 1986 European Cup Winners’ Cup Final against Atletico Madrid live on television.
I hope to put this right in subsequent posts about Valerij Lobanovs’kyj, Anatoli Zelentsov, Oleh Bazylevich and Mykhailo Oshenko. Their shared story is a foundation of contemporary analysis of performance.
I have a passionate interest in researching and sharing life histories, particularly in the context of the analysis of performance of sport. I should have picked up on a number of leads provided by, among others, Jonathan Wilson, Simon Kuper, Hans-Joachim Braun and David Sumpter.
I even missed the numerable mentions made during UEFA’s Euro 2012 competition part hosted in Ukraine.
In starting my research, triggered finally by a sentence in a recent Barney Ronay post:
Lobanovskiy is usually cast as the father of things. Father of analytics. Father of a data-driven total football. … every movement tracked, rated and tessellated
I was struck by this paragraph in Blair Newman’s 2015 post:
On the training ground he worked with his backroom staff to enshrine new ideas into the Dynamo method. Anatoli Zelentsov was responsible for the preparation of individual players, using innovative computerised testing to measure and correct their fitness levels and predicted performance. Lobanovskyi’s former team-mate Oleh Bazylevich had been recruited as coach, while Mykhaylo Oshemkov dealt with collecting statistical information.
The Dynamo Four were in place in the mid-1970s … just at the time I started my pen and paper records of performance in rugby union. I was thinking calligraphy, they were thinking cybernetics.
Photo Credit
Valeri Lobanovsky (Rob Croes, Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, Rijksfotoarchief, CC BY-SA 3.0 nl)
