MOSCOW, August 17 Torpedo forward Igor Lebedenko announced about the end of his football career at the age of 41 after the victory of the Automobile Plant over Nizhnekamsk Neftekhimik in the First League match dedicated to the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Moscow club.
The meeting of the sixth round of the championship took place on Saturday in Moscow at the large arena of the Luzhniki sports complex and ended with a score of 2:1 in favor of the hosts. Lebedenko came on as a substitute at the end of the game and played his 250th match for the automakers. After the match, the striker was presented with a commemorative T-shirt with the number 250, and he addressed the fans with a farewell speech.
«Today marks 100 years of great history, 100 years of a great club. It was an honor for me to play with the team in today's game, and I want to say thank you. Thank you to my partners, the coaching staff, the club's management, my wife, who went through all my football years with me, my children. And, of course, thank you very much, dear fans. Without you, nothing would have happened. I made my debut at this beautiful stadium more than 20 years ago, and today I say goodbye to you. You made me stronger every year. I hope that I will be useful to the team, but in a different status,» he said in an address, a video of which was published on the official Telegram channel of the First League.
Lebedenko, a Torpedo alumnus, made his debut in the Russian championship as part of the «black and whites» in 2002. In 2005, he moved to Moscow's Lokomotiv, for which he played one season. After that, he played for Saturn Ramenskoye, Rostov, Rubin Kazan, Terek Grozny (now Akhmat), Ararat Moscow and Fakel Voronezh, and in 2019 he returned to Torpedo. Due to his transfer to Lokomotiv, active Torpedo fans declared Lebedenko a traitor and repeatedly protested against his return to the Avtozavod team. But after a while, the footballer and the fans reconciled.
Torpedo was founded on August 17, 1924. The Avtozavodtsy team is a three-time USSR champion (1960, 1965, 1976 — fall), six-time winner of the Soviet Union Cup (1949, 1952, 1960, 1968, 1972, 1986), and also the winner of the first Russian Cup in 1993.