From July 30 to August 3, 2026, Barnaul will host the international football tournament among boys born in 2015 in memory of the legendary coach Gennady Ivanovich Smertin.
16 teams from Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus will take part in the competition. The Central Academy of Dynamo from Moscow and its branches from the Altai and Primorsky Territories, Voronezh, Novgorod, Ulyanovsk regions and the Republic of Dagestan, as well as Kairat (Almaty), Astana, Elimai (Semey), RB Arman (Pavlodar), the national team of the Grodno region, Dynamo Makhachkala, SSHOR Yenisei (Krasnoyarsk), SSHOR named after A. Smertin (Barnaul) and SSHOR named after V. P. Shchedrukhin (Minusinsk).
The organizers are the Ministry of Sports of the Altai Territory, the Dynamo Football Academy named after L. I. Yashin and the Altai Regional Football Federation.
The tournament is dedicated to the memory of Gennady Ivanovich Smertin – people's coach, father of famous football players Yevgeny and Alexei Smertin. He devoted his whole life to working with the younger generation: he taught the yard boys football and instilled sports discipline in them. From 2006 to 2016, Gennady Ivanovich worked at a football school named after his son, where the pupils affectionately called him "Uncle Gena." Having no special education and official regalia, he brought up a whole galaxy of bright football players – among them midfielder of Zenit and the Russian national team Alexander Erokhin and midfielder of Lokomotiv Artem Karpukas. Gennady Ivanovich died in March 2016, and in memory of his father, the sons, together with the Dynamo Academy, organized an annual tournament named after him. Since then, the competition has grown from a local to a major international event.
This tournament is of particular importance for Dynamo. Barnaul has long been associated with the blue and white through the Smertin brothers, pupils of local football, who played for Dynamo Moscow. And on October 3, 2021, one of the first regional branches of the Academy named after L. I. Yashin was opened at the Dynamo stadium in Barnaul with the support of VTB Bank. Today, promising students of the branches get the opportunity to continue their studies at the Central Academy in Moscow, and then join the Dynamo-2 and the main team.
– Every year, together with my brother, under the auspices of the Dynamo Academy, we hold this tournament in honor of a man for whom football was not just a game, but a real life, – said Gennady Ivanovich's son, Academy coach Yevgeny Smertin.
The main goal of the tournament is to preserve the memory of an outstanding mentor, develop youth football and strengthen sports traditions.
The tournament is organized with the support of the Russian Sports Foundation, established in 2025 on behalf of the President of Russia for the development of physical culture and sports.