The last winner

A monument in Rostov Victor Monday was erected during his lifetime

A piece of newsreel from the newsletter “News of the day” all fans with experience remember without looking on the Internet: a canopy with the left flank, the striker jumps above all and sends the ball to the gates with his head. Nothing special if it were not for the entourage: Paris, the stadium "Park de Prens", the final of the first Cup of Europe, the USSR - Yugoslavia, extra time, July 10, 1960, Sunday. In Moscow, however, at that moment Monday has already come, and a new era began with the golden goal of the striker under the same surname in Soviet football. Further on those chronic frames, the winners, led by Igor Netto in the rain, quite briskly make a circle of honor, but, according to the memoirs of Monday, they barely hobbled, and the captain specially cut off the distance - there was no strength to run.

There is no one else to remember such details-Viktor Vladimirovich Monday, who died on Saturday December 5 at the 84th year of his life, was the last of the surviving winners of the first Cup of Europe.

He, of course, identified the golden goal, but was most proud that from that moment Soviet football recognized the whole world.

This was the third match of Victor Monday for the USSR national team. On May 19, in the debut “Khladk”, a guy from Rostov-on-Don shipped to Poland in Luzhniki three goals. Nobody began, even the greatest, from the hat-trick in the national team. On May 22, Monday without a glass of champagne celebrated his 23rd anniversary. At the training camp in the Lakes near Moscow, he was settled with Lev Yashin. In the quarterfinals of the first official continental tournament, the team was supposed to play with the Spaniards twice, but Franco at the last moment refused to send their national team to Moscow, so that the final of four went without a hassle.

On July 6, the debutant scored again on the Marseille Cycles in the semifinals of the European Cup, securing a major victory over the team of Czechoslovakia. Then there was a triumph in Paris, in the fall of 1960-two friendly matches, again with Monday goals. He scored in five of his first official meetings for the national team - a kind of record.

Mikhail Meskhi gave him the golden pass, which is also symbolic. Meskhi knew the Russian poorly, and Monday knew Georgian well, which he took possession of evacuation. In Tbilisi, he and his mother and sister were miraculously managing to sit in the last echelon when the Germans were already on the outskirts of Rostov. Football began for Viti in Tbilisi (the Dynamo stadium was nearby), like the school. Georgia has forever became a second home for him.

There are other coincidences that Victor Monday gave the extraordinary spring of the 60th. On May 29, exactly a week after his birthday, the first issue of the Football weekly was released, which became the most popular publication in the USSR, which spread exclusively to retail. Seven years later, the weekly began to be called “Football Hockey”, another 17, after the famous Leo Filatov, he was headed by ... Victor Monday.

The writer Alexander Nilin once called Monday a lucky one, but, not offending a wonderful San Palych, luck, perhaps, only by the very first year of Monday in the national team. To the fees of him, the player of the Rostselmash team B, was called at the beginning of 1958-on the eve of the World Cup-just in case. And he could get there, and it would definitely come in handy - the genius of Eduard Streltsov on the widespread accusation was demonstratively imprisoned, Nikita Simonyan’s career was drawing to a close, but the first operation on the knee was blocked to the Monday World Cup. A new call had to wait two years.

The Divine Center with Streltsov could produce a splash in Sweden, but as it happened, it happened. Together they will go out on the field, already playing for veterans. In such a match, somewhere closer to the mid-70s, I saw them. Two outstanding centers, who realized their potential, were hardly half, impressive, even taking into account the fact that the match was an exhibition.

By current standards, Victor Monday did not differ in some special physical data. Yes, tall, athletic, jumping, coordinated, but you can’t say that fast and very technical. But with a powerful blow, the ability to choose a position, with an ass threat that does not interfere with working for the team:

He has no less fifty passes than the goals, which he has for exactly two dozen for 29 games in the form of a national team.

Of course, the first five anniversary of the 60s, even if there are stars such as Voronin, Ivanov, Yashin, sixnev, Metreveli, could have become the five-year period of Monday. The next year after Paris, the team led by Gabriel Kachalin in a tour of South America rolled up the collection of Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. The Argentines in Buenos Aires on River Plateite, Monday, scored his second goal with bisiclet-met a meter from the right flank, but already slipped over the line of the ball Monday, irresistibly breaking through himself in the fall. The crowd spilled on the field after the final whistle instantly broke the T -shirts of the winners of the souvenirs, and the police who specially guarded the protagonist themselves did the same with his T -shirt at number 9.

Alas, the World Cup in Chile in 1962 did not set the whole team, even if Victor Monday and scored two goals and assisted his partners four times. The loss of the owners in the quarterfinals cost Kachalin's places, but even more offensive two years later, the result of the final of the second Cup of Europe was. Under the leadership of Konstantin Beskov, the USSR national team on the way to the “final of four” passed Italy and Sweden, in “Luzhniki” Monday scored both teams, Sweden in general twice. The semifinals with Denmark were played in Barcelona, ​​and in a row it was a copy of Marseille-1960: three unrequited goals, and one of them on the account of Monday.

The final for Santiago Bernabeu was detained for an hour and a half. Caudillo waited, and the dictators and leaders of the authoritarian type, as you know, love to be demolished, this is their characteristic feature. The USSR national team was obliged to win - only with this condition party bonzes were allowed to fly to the "fascist den." Everything was for the owners, including a roaring 80 thousandth stadium. Beskov chose a purely defensive option; The players, crushed by the responsibility, seemed to burn out and missed the decisive ball from Marcelino six minutes before the final whistle.

The day after the Beskov arrived, they took off. Monday, not counting the two “goods” in Algeria, was no longer called to the national team-his position in the 65th was entrusted with Anatoly Banishevsky. A year later, after the World Cup, five minutes after the start of a friendly match with the GDR, Monday symbolically gave way to Anatoly Byshovtsa.

Well, where is the luck, if the whole career of Monday in large football is five to six years? I was waiting for the forward's debut in his beloved Spartak, where he moved in January 1966, but did not wait-it was not possible to restart his career due to injuries and had long tormented him with bronchial asthma. Who knows how everything would have turned out, remained Monday in CSKA in 1961, but he stayed with the capital's army with exactly a day-the issue was resolved at the level of the CPSU Central Committee, and the special operation to return the people's favorite to Rostov successfully ended.

The fact that he played only for the Rostov Rostselmash and SKA makes Monday honor, but at the union level he was left without regalia.

I could not hear the unique report of Nikolai Ozerov from Paris for a few years, I didn’t see television from Madrid either-by and large, football began with the World Cup in England in 1966, where Monday was no longer. But I read his first reports in the "Soviet sports" of the early 70s. As the ex-former himself said, he did not leave football, but simply changed his role. The genes of his father, a famous journalist, nevertheless affected, and here Viktor Vladimirovich Monday reached the top of the career of the football observer, heading the most popular weekly. True, his “football-Hockey”, in which he did not change Filatov’s traditions, ended exactly 30 years after the first release-this was the anniversary of both the first victory and publication.

Before the disease did not finally break the Don scorer, he was in sight. He was awarded to the Rubin Order of UEFA Michel Platini. He was applauded by the Kyiv Palace of Arts during the ceremony of the draw of Euro 2012. He was given horses, he was warmly accepted in every city, not to mention his native Rostov, where in 2015 they opened a personal monument at the Olympus-2 stadium. He held different football positions, mainly public, was friends with Maya Plisetskaya, Kirill Lavrov and Evgeny Leonov, played chess with Mikhail Tale and Tigran Petrosyan, he wrote-naturally, four books, for some time was directly related to football topics-yes, do not be surprised-in the Novaya Gazeta.

By the way, about the last name. According to the family legend, this is a clerk with a toll or drunk, he was mistaken, entering the day of the week in the column “surname”. And the former serf, who appeared on the Don somewhere in the 60s of the century before last, became Monday.

And he once wrote his descendant about his favorite game like this: "We loved football more than ourselves in it." You can’t say better.