Friday marks exactly one hundred years since the birth of the famous defender of Dynamo Konstantin Krizhevskiy.
Konstantin Stanislavovich was born on February 20, 1926, in Odintsovo, near Moscow. He began playing football on a vocational school team in Moscow, and after the outbreak of World War II, he and his family were evacuated to Kuibyshev (now Samara), where he first played for a factory team and then for Krylia Sovetov.
After being drafted into the army in 1948, the promising defender found himself on the VVS team, created at the Moscow Aviation Technical School. While playing for them, Krizhevskiy received an invitation to the newly formed USSR national team. After the VVS was liquidated, he played a few matches for the MVO club until June 1953, when the team was also removed from the USSR championship.
"In 1953, I was faced with the task of choosing a team. At Dynamo, I knew Beskov and Trofimov very well, having already played with them on the Olympic team. He also held Leonid Konstantinovich Solovyov in high regard, considering him the strongest central defender of the early post-war years, and dreamed of learning a great deal from him. "I was invited to Dynamo by the team's head coach of that period, Mikhail Vasilyevich Semichastny, and I accepted without hesitation," Krizhevskiy later recalled.
At Dynamo, Konstantin Stanislavovich became one of the best central defenders in the country. Thanks in large part to him, the blue-and-whites' defensive line was the best in the country in the second half of the 1950s and determined the club's success. In all eight full seasons under Krizhevskiy, Dynamo won either the Cup (1953) or a national championship medal — four gold, two silver, and one bronze.
The "flying" defender, as Krizhevskiy was often called, mastered the sliding tackle to perfection, often heading the ball in and diving overhead. His acrobatic style, dedication, and agility evoked the admiration of the crowd and the respect of his teammates. It's no wonder he wore the captain's armband for 75 of his 155 matches for the blue-and-whites.
"With inimitable ease, beauty, and effortlessness, he executed the most complex technical elements, delighting everyone present with his performance. Sliding tackles, diving overhead kicks, all sorts of flips and somersaults with the ball in the air, and his signature "aerial splits," which no one before or since could perform with such skill — this is far from a complete list of the techniques used by this inimitable master," Leonid Solovyov said of him.
After retiring from playing, Konstantin Stanislavovich remained with the club and coached youth football until 1996. The brilliant footballer passed away on November 18, 2000, and is buried at the Vagankovskoye Cemetery.