Friday marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of the outstanding Soviet football player, the legendary Dynamo player – Sergei Ilyin.
Sergei Sergeyevich was born in 1906 to a worker at the Kolomna Locomotive Plant and followed in his father's footsteps, joining the same company. His football career began there. In 1929, he was spotted by the Central Sports Palace of the Red Army, from where he moved to Dynamo two years later.
In his first year with the white-and-blues, he became Moscow champion (he would go on to win four such titles in total). A left winger with excellent dribbling and tactical acumen, he quickly became one of the team's leaders, and in 1935, he became captain, leading Dynamo to three championships and its first USSR Cup.
Mikhail Yakushin said that "playing with Ilyin in attack was a pure pleasure," while another of his teammates, Gavriil Kachalin, had this to say about him: "He was my favorite footballer, my idol, whose game has remained a model for me, a benchmark for the highest level of football skill. I'm proud to have been friends with Sergei Sergeyevich for many years and to have learned from him. I was always struck by Ilyin's drive for innovation, his insatiable interest in new techniques, feints, and shots. He never rested on his laurels, always striving to impress his opponents with something new, something unfamiliar, something that stumped them."
Ilyin played his last match for Dynamo a month before his 39th birthday, during the victorious 1945 championship, after which he went with the team on a legendary tour of Great Britain. In total, he scored 58 goals in 114 official matches for our club (excluding games in the Moscow championship).
After retiring as a footballer, he continued playing bandy, extending his athletic longevity to 47 years! With Dynamo, he won three USSR championships and 12 national cups in this sport.
Ilyin later worked as an administrator for the white-and-blues' senior team, and in his final years, he worked with children's and youth football within the Dynamo system. Ilyin lived a long and distinguished life and died on October 14, 1997, at the age of ninety-one. Sergei Sergeyevich was buried at the Vvedenskoye Cemetery in Moscow.