Igor Chislenko Football player Date of Birth: 04.01.1939 Country: Russia

Biography of Igor Chislenko

Igor Chislenko was a Soviet football player and forward. He was nominated alongside Grigory Fedotov in our television show "Century of Football", where we determine the best player of the century. This nomination caused a stir even among specialists: how is it possible! Grigory Ivanovich and Chislenko... However, to the credit of the specialists, they quickly understood and calmed down. They remembered Chislenko's achievements in football. Of course, Chislenko, also known as "Osa" (The Wasp), enters the realm of greatness - due to the peculiarities of his character and lifestyle - more than the classics of the 1940s. Nevertheless, who else besides Osa can be compared to the incomparable Trofimov? Red Number Sixtieth Anniversary - RED NUMBER - and we were completely right to honor Igor Leonidovich for his merits and place him in the same category as Vasily Dmitrievich and Valery Vasilyevich. However, after meeting with Chislenko's friends, the Dynamo players, famous football and hockey masters (he also played hockey brilliantly, training under Trofimov), and hearing stories about him not as a memorial, but as a living and sinful person, we did not want to deprive these joyful and sad strokes from both the admirers of this rare talent of a forward, who was in the top ten in Europe, and those who did not witness it... Gennady Gusarov. He burst into the national team. They noticed him in 1961. But he sat on the bench, hardly played. And then - the World Championship in Chile, the first game against Yugoslavia - as part of Metreveli... The game was tough - Slavka was hit in the eye, his eye was swollen, he could only see from one side. In the next game against Colombia, Slavka couldn't play. And Chislenko was put in for the national team for the first time. And he played an outstanding game! He and Valya Ivanov scored three goals in the first fifteen minutes and led the team to a 3-0 victory over Colombia. Before the game against Uruguay, there was no question of who to put in. Igor started playing in the main lineup constantly. Muha (Metreveli) moved to the second roles. When we played against Italy in the 1963 European Cup, Beshkov placed Chislenko in the midfield as the fifth forward. He could do everything a footballer should do on the field. Well, maybe he couldn't compete in the air due to his small height, but other than that: he had excellent speed, a great shot with both feet, field vision, dribbling - I told you, everything. He was a winger but could also play in the center of the field. And most importantly - when you play with him, you feel psychologically calm, confident that if you pass the ball to him, you will definitely get it back. When you play with Ivanov, Chislenko, Voronin, you feel calm, you know - these guys play better than you, and they will always help you. Eduard Mudrik. When we were abroad, he bought ten fashionable raincoats. But as an honest person, he brought them to the consignment shop and waited for them to be sold. The newspaper wrote about him: he is a speculator. Speculators sell things under the table, but he officially brought them to the consignment shop, and they wrote a satirical article about him. Vyacheslav Solovyov. He struggled between hockey and football. After various trips to South America, he would come back, and there would be a window of opportunity for him to play hockey - he played constantly until 1959. He played in the 1959 semifinal against Sverdlovsk. Chislenko was a risk-taker. It was his element - to outplay a bunch of opponents. Once we played veterans in Dimitrovgrad. The team was strong - Igor was not in the best shape, so he had to be put on the bench. He stood by the goal. Suddenly, we had an attack, we shot, and the goalkeeper saved the ball. And the ball was lying there, with no one around. Igor shouted, "Solovei, let me out, these are my favorite rebounds!" He loved extreme situations in life as well. When he worked as an assembler, he had to climb 40 meters, everyone was afraid, but Igor said, "I will climb." He was not afraid of anything. And all these antics - like when he had a car accident - everything related to risk was natural for him. He was a maximalist in life. Even when he married Olga, who was pursued by Netto, Voronin... But Igor set a goal - to win her, and he did, although I don't know if he won or lost. What I liked about him was that he was always self-critical. Igor was always dissatisfied with himself - he would score three goals and then remember that he could have scored more. That's the difference from today's football players. In 1966, after the World Cup, the guys came, his acquaintances, and we met. I raised a toast: for your success, for the "bronze", and Chislenko frowned. In his mind, fourth place was not a "bronze". We were "second" in Europe before that, and at the World Cup, three European teams surpassed us. Everyone: "Hooray, hooray," but for him, it was unacceptable that we could play worse than Portugal. The party committee scolded him: they saw him in "Sovetskaya". And Igor said, "Should I lock myself in a closet and drink there?" He said, "I live by Gorky's words - it's better to drink pure blood once than to feed on carrion all the time." They offered him a job in the traffic police: they said, "Let's give you a car that escorts government limousines at Sheremetyevo. You accompany them for a day, then you have three days off. To maintain his seniority - he already had 17 years of service then. And after 20, you can retire as a major. He didn't agree: "I will let you down too." He went to work at an asphalt-concrete plant. And the fans approached me, gave me money for him in an envelope, we met in a passage, and he was wearing some inconspicuous jacket. I said, "Here, the guys collected this for you." "What guys?" "Fans, ours, workers." He didn't take it. "Just lend me ten rubles instead." They collected it as a team - pooling their salary, to have a gathering. In the morning, Chislenko comes - picks up all the cigarette butts so that everything looks neat... He goes and returns the empty bottles, and brings a bottle of vodka. In the morning, the workers come and think they should buy some. But Chislenko says, "I already got it." Gennady Gusarov. Igor's mother worked at the academy, his father - in the Foreign Trade organization, his brother defended his candidate's dissertation at the age of 21. They were an intellectual family. Someone asked him, "Well, what about you?" He laughed: "There is no family without a black sheep." Boris Chertok. He didn't like show-offs, fancy conversations. We would sit in a company, someone would start talking beautifully, he would listen and then get up and say, "By the time you went there, I was already coming back." He was a player by nature. He was born to play all the time. In hockey, football, everything. Eduard Mudrik. We were playing cards in Sakhalin in the evening. Chislenko bought six bottles of champagne. And in the morning, we wake up, and he checks the bill - and to Kesarev, he says, "You owe me 42 kopecks." But he wouldn't remember bringing six bottles of champagne to the group - that was just a game. We sit down to play cards again. And the day before, we met with Spartak. He suddenly says, "Yes, Netto is fine." It turns out it was a code word: "six." (Netto played under the number six.) He couldn't live without a playful trick. We arrive at a sanatorium, and there is a long line at the box office. Chislenko takes off his coat and goes to the ticket office in one suit. The line goes silent - if he is undressed, then he must be going somewhere. Once we came, and there were only five people in line. I said, "Let's wait - it won't be long." He said, "No, no." And while undressing, there was no line anymore, but he found it more interesting this way... Gennady Gusarov. His day started with grumbling. I would tell him to smile. He would say, "I'm not in the mood." But as soon as he got "a bit" tipsy, he would immediately burst into laughter, infecting everyone around him, and the whole team would be in a frenzy. He was indispensable in a company. He already knew any joke that was told to him. When he was in good shape, coaches wouldn't say anything to him. But as soon as there was a glitch, they would immediately say to him, "Chislenko, where are your little glasses..." And he would never get into conflicts himself. In the winter of 1965, Chislenko was the best. But Beshkov didn't want to take him to Australia anymore - he crossed him out. Before the medical examination, I told him, "Chislo, you can't drink today, tomorrow - please." He said, "Okay, but can I have breakfast?" We arrive at "Sovetskaya", it's eight in the morning, and before we know it, there are already two bottles of champagne on the table. We managed to keep him sober for the day, but by evening, he "refreshed" himself, of course. At the medical examination, a female doctor who didn't know him asked, "How long have you been drinking?" He said, "Since childhood." And for him, the most important thing was to go to Australia; he had been everywhere else, but he had never been there. Valery Korolgnkov. We returned from South America, flew through Paris. He bought himself five or six suits. He called us when he arrived, and we met him. We were sitting in "Sovetskaya." He changed his suits five times that evening. Eduard Mudrik. He loved to dress elegantly and set fashion trends within the team. There is no doubt that if he had less grandiose talent and a less famous name, his friends would not have risked doing anything like this in his anniversary year. But Igor Chislenko would find it humiliating to have any makeup or embellishments in his biography. He wanted to present himself to the world as he truly was. And he would undoubtedly be pleased with the honesty of his friends, who saw him as something like the Mozart of football, or even just Mozart. Without any reservations.