Alexei Prudnikov is 65 years old!

Alexey Pavlovich was born on March 20, 1960 in Moscow. He started as a skier, but really wanted to become a football player. In the first half of the 1970s, he was accepted into the youth team "Red Bogatyr", where he immediately stood in the goal. A year later, he moved to the Spartak school, and his professional career subsequently began there.

In Spartak Prudnikov was Rinat Dasaev's back-up and in order to get playing practice at the end of 1982 he moved to Dynamo, where he took the place of the main goalkeeper. After brilliantly winning the USSR Cup, in the semifinals and finals of which Prudnikov did not miss a single goal from Dynamo Minsk and Zenit, he was entrusted with the captain's armband. In total, Alexei Pavlovich played 152 matches for Dynamo and made 56 clean sheets.

His style was distinguished by reliability and restraint, rather than playing to the public with spectacular jumps, which were already in fashion in those years. He behaved like the owner of the penalty area and often helped the central defenders. He had a good reaction and was able to deflect penalties. For example, he took an eleven-meter shot from the legendary Antonin Panenka in the first match of the 1984/85 Cup Winners' Cup semi-final against Rapid Vienna in front of twenty thousand spectators at the Gerhard Hanappi stadium.

– I read from some goalkeeper from the GDR how the run-up affects the shot. A lot is already clear, – Prudnikov recalled in an interview with Sport-Express. – Years later I found myself in the Czech Republic with Panenka at the same table. Sasha Bokiy asks: "Tony, do you know who you're sitting with? This is the keeper who took the penalty from you." Panenka looked closely and remembered me! And the penalty was one of the most important in his life – the semi-final of the Cup Winners' Cup with Rapid, we are leading 1-0. The Czech referee strangles us with all his might, assigns a penalty, and Panenka does not hit the center with a scoop, but strongly into the corner. I take it!

In 1980, he won the gold medals of the U-21 European Championship, playing in one of the final matches against the GDR team, and eight years later became the Olympic champion as part of the USSR national team at the Olympics in Seoul.

After playing for Dynamo, Prudnikov played in different clubs in Russia and Europe, and finished his career in the South Korean championship, where he began his career as a goalkeeper coach. In the 2000s he managed to work in this role in different countries, and in recent years he has been actively involved in the Dynamo veteran movement.