Friday marks the 95th anniversary of the birth of the famous striker of Dynamo Moscow Alakbar Mammadov.
Alakbar Amirovich was born on May 9, 1930 in Baku, the capital of the Azerbaijan SSR. He took his first steps in football in the Baku youth team Spartak, after which he began to defend the colors of the local Neftyanik. Having played in it for six seasons at a high level and demonstrated his scoring qualities, Mammadov received an invitation from the best Soviet club of that time – Dynamo Moscow.
Alakbar Amirovich spent six seasons for the blue and whites - from 1954 to 1959 – and scored 45 goals in 99 matches. An amazing fact: under Mammadov, Dynamo never dropped below second place in the USSR championships. Accordingly, for six years in the capital's club, he won gold medals four times and silver medals twice.
– Alakbar Mammadov's invitation was received very critically by many experts. But Yakushin saw him not as he was at home in Neftyanik, but as he could and should be with us. Mikhail Iosifovich worked with him a lot individually, prepared him physically, tactically and psychologically for the role of the leader of the attack of the leading team of the country. And I must say that the efforts of the senior coach were not in vain. It was at Dynamo that the talent of this wonderful athlete blossomed and manifested to the fullest extent, – recalled Lev Yashin.
Another curious fact: during his Dynamo career, Alakbar Amirovich scored one hat-trick and two hauls, and all of them came in the second half. The most famous of them is four goals against the Italian Milan at the crowded San Siro in September 1955 in a friendly match. After the victory of Dynamo with a score of 4:1, the foreign press called Mammadov "a first-class football player not only in Russia, but also in Europe." Mammadov played 4 matches for the USSR national team, including a qualifying game for the triumphant European Championship-1960.
In 1959, Mammadov played only 12 matches for Dynamo (11 in the USSR championship and one in the USSR Cup), after which he decided to return to his native Neftyanik. After playing three more years, he finished with football and moved on to coaching. For more than 10 years he was associated with Neftyanik, then he began to engage in pedagogical activities and teach at Baku universities. In 1993, Mammadov headed the Azerbaijani national team, he was also a member of the executive committees of the Association of Football Federations of Azerbaijan and the National Olympic Committee, and was awarded many state awards.
Alakbar Amirovich shared his rich football experience in the books "On Three Continents" (1963), "Secrets of the Football Profession" (1991) and "What is our Life? Game!"Memories and reflections" (2010).