Last week in St. Petersburg, not only Alexei Mishin, but also Yuri Zheludkov celebrated a non-anniversary birthday. A favorite of Zenit fans and, perhaps, the most underestimated footballer of the championship team of 1984, who was not spoiled by fate even after the end of his career.
Zheludkov was supposed to play for Spartak. In his youth, having played, and at the same time having served in the Leningrad «Dynamo», he, following the head coach Yuri Morozov, was going to move to the main club of the city. It was only in the middle of the season that the breeders of the “red-whites”, having seen the game of the young Zheludkov in Voronezh, persuaded him to write an application for a transfer to Spartak. Upon learning of this, Morozov began to press on the innermost strings of the soul of the ward: «How will you, Leningrader, leave your native city?» After that, Yuri called Konstantin Beskov, apologized and said that he was staying in Leningrad.
The St. Petersburg goalscorer failed to prove himself in the national team. Neither Eduard Malofeev, nor Konstantin Beskov, nor Valery Lobanovsky saw a Zenit player in the team. Yes, and Zheludkov had serious competitors: Yuri Gavrilov, Fedor Cherenkov, Alexander Zavarov. The Zenit scorer played the only official match for the Olympic team in the qualifying tournament for the 1984 Olympics. Surely he would have gone to Los Angeles, but the party leaders of the USSR deprived him of such an opportunity.
Zheludkov went abroad only in the late 80s, but his legionary career did not work out. In the Swedish “Östersund”, Yuri not only did not earn, but also hardly fit into the thousand dollars that was due under the contract. “We were brought up in such a way that we tried to bring gifts from abroad to everyone,” Zheludkov recalled. “Sweden is an expensive country. We had to save on everything. My wife lost 8 kg!”
In Israel, the championship is held according to a two-stage formula. After the first group stage, the teams are divided into two groups. Zheludkov's club, thanks to a goal scored by him, went into the lead, after which the coach announced: «Yuri, we will look at young players. Under the contract, we will pay everything, but don't even hope to enter the field.» As Zheludkov admitted, he was not particularly upset. Around the sea, the sun, a lot of people who speak Russian. Lived a little in the resort, receiving the salary of a football professional.
