Igor Dobrovolskiy

Igor Ivanovich Dobrovolskiy was born on August 27, 1967, in the village of Markovka on the border of Ukraine and Moldova. He started playing football at a children's sports school in Tiraspol. His first coach, Iosif Frantsevich Kaiser, saw natural talent in him, allowing the young footballer to improvise and think on the field.

— The coaches assigned me to the center of midfield. I liked it and I never even thought about changing my role. In my early childhood, I dreamed of becoming a pilot. And my position on the field is like a pilot in the cockpit: all the space in front of you — look and act, — Dobrovolskiy recalled.

Dobrovolskiy began his career at the adult level in Nistru Chisinau. In October 1983, the club, which was on the verge of relegation from the USSR Premier League, hosted the powerful Dnipro, led by coach Vladimir Yemets. Before the match of the main teams, the reserve teams met, for which the young midfielder played.

Yemets was so impressed by the performance of 16-year-old Dobrovolskiy, who brought the Moldovan club a draw with his goal, that after the match he brought him to the locker room of his team and said: "Look who did you. Forty kilograms. Of them, thirty-five are in the head."

Not only Dnipro, but also many other famous clubs were hunting for Dobrovolskiy. Nistru coach Anatoliy Polosin even took him to the Dynamo Kyiv training ground for a tryout with Valeriy Lobanovskiy. But on the very first day, the young midfielder secretly went back to Chisinau, only to end up in Dynamo Moscow four months later.

Alongside Alexander Borodyuk, Igor Kolyvanov, Andrei Kobelev, and a little later Sergei Kiryakov, Dobrovolskiy's talent began to quickly blossom. And in the very first season, he could have won the long-awaited championship with the team, but in the last round, the white-blues lost to the Kievans and fell behind them by one point. Four years later, Dobrovolskiy was recognized as the best player in the country, and he went to conquer Europe.

Lobanovskiy did not hold a grudge against Dobrovolskiy for escaping from the Dynamo Kyiv base and willingly called him up to the USSR national team. The midfielder did not go to the 1988 European Championship due to injury and was left without a silver medal, but he fully compensated for this deficiency at the Olympics in Seoul.

There, the Soviet footballers were able to beat both the Germans with Klinsmann and Hessler, and the Brazilians with Romario and Bebeto. In the final match with the South American team, it was Dobrovolskiy who equalized the score in the second half, scoring his sixth goal of the tournament, and in added time, a strike by Yuri Savichev brought victory to the USSR national team.

Wherever Dobrovolskiy played, his attitude to football always earned him the respect of his teammates and fans. When he played for the Swiss Servette, he had a chance to become the top scorer of the championship in the last round match. But he let a local player take the penalty he earned, and then he consoled him after the miss. As a result, before leaving Geneva, Dobrovolskiy was given a lavish send-off and an expensive Swiss watch.

— I was absolutely calm about my successes and achievements in football. I never collected T-shirts, prizes, medals, certificates, etc. Of course, this does not mean that I threw them away. But I never take them out to admire them. The football I love remains in my heart, - said Dobrovolskiy.

The next stop in Dobrovolskiy's career was Olympique Marseille, where he was personally invited by the club's president, Bernard Tapie. Igor Ivanovich spent only one season in the French club, but managed to win the national championship with the team and become the first Russian to win the Champions League.

In the summer of the same year, Dobrovolskiy returned to Dynamo as captain and helped the team win bronze medals in the Russian championship. A year later, he left for Atletico Madrid, and finished his career in the German Fortuna.

"Dynamo Constellation" is a unique project launched on the day of Alexey Khomich's 100th anniversary in March 2020. Based on the results of the fan vote, the final roster of 11 outstanding Dynamo players was formed. During 2020 and 2021, 11 stars included in the constellation were named after legendary Dynamo football players: Alexei Khomich, Lev Yashin, Mikhail Yakushin, Konstantin Beskov, Mikhail Semichastniy, Igor Chislenko, Sergei Solovyov, Valeriy Maslov, Viktor Tsarev, Igor Dobrovolskiy and Alexander Novikov.