In modern football, there are very few individuals who have devoted almost their entire career to one club, raising it from obscurity to unshakable heights. From world names, the Scottish "long-lived coach" Sir Alex Ferguson immediately comes to mind, but in our country there is an example - Yuri Pavlovich Semin, who devoted two decades to Moscow Lokomotiv, making it a leading Russian club from a mediocre team.
Biography
On May 11, 1947, their only child, Yuri, was born into the family of Pavel and Vera Semins, who live in Orenburg. Soon the family had to move to the city of Oryol, where his father quickly found a job as a driver for the district committee secretary. Thanks to this circumstance, Semin got hold of the only ball in the district and completely immersed himself in football, practicing it at any time, even instead of going to school.
These trainings were not in vain, and he quickly made his way to Oryol's Spartak, and after various youth competitions, professional teams of the country, including Metallurg, Kiev and Moscow Dynamo, became interested in him. In 1965, Yuri was transferred to Spartak Moscow, where he stayed for three years without winning any awards.
Football career
The next stage in Semin's playing career was the transfer to Dynamo Moscow, for which he had been rooting since childhood. In 1970, the team won the USSR Cup and silver medals in the USSR Championship. However, due to the conflict with Konstantin Beskov, already in 1972, Yuri moved to Kairat of the city of Alma-Ata, where he spent only two seasons, and due to disagreements with head coach Artem Falyan, the player was transferred to the Chkalovets team of the second league.
Already in veteran status at the end of 1975, Yuri began playing for the famous Moscow Lokomotiv, which became the penultimate team in his playing career. From 1978 to 1980 as a member of Kuban, Semin helped Krasnodar to enter the Major League as a leader and captain, but at the age of 33, due to a serious injury, they decided to stop playing and try themselves in the coaching field.
Coaching career
Before his appointment to Lokomotiv as head coach in 1986, Yuri Pavlovich was in charge of Kuban and Pamir, where he did not achieve any success. Under the leadership of Semin, the railway workers twice went to the top league of the USSR, but they could not gain a foothold there.
In 1991, an exotic offer from New Zealand was received, and Yuri Pavlovich accepted it, having spent one qualifying round on the islands, after which he returned back to Lokomotiv. After that, the period of the formation of the team as one of the flagships of Russian football began, but this path was difficult. Semin often faced financial, household and other everyday problems that he had to solve on his own.
The first success came in 1996, when the Russian Cup was won. A year later, this trophy was again won by Lokomotiv, in addition, the club began to regularly take prizes in the championship, and also achieved success in the European arena, reaching the semi-finals of the Cup Winners' Cup in 1998 and 1999. At the beginning of the new millennium in 2002 and 2004, the railway workers won the title of national champions.
After such success, in 2005, Semin was invited to the post of coach of the Russian national team, but he could not complete the task - to get to the finals of the World Championship in Germany - and, without extending the contract, left the national team. Yuri Pavlovich also broke the agreement with Lokomotiv due to differences in views on the team's future.
At the beginning of the next year, Semin tried to achieve success with Dynamo Moscow, but in August he resigned from his post and at the end of the year returned to his native Lokomotiv as president of the club. 2007 turned out to be a disaster, which led to the dismissal of all team leaders.
The next stage in the coach's career was Dynamo Kiev, where in 2 years they managed to win gold in the Ukrainian championship and reach the UEFA Cup semifinals. After that, in 2009, Yuri returned to Lokomotiv, but in 2010 he was removed from the leadership of the Board of Directors of railway workers.
After that, short-term wanderings began in various clubs of the post-Soviet space, including "Gabala", "Mordovia", "Anji", where significant success was not achieved. It seemed that the coaching career was coming to an end, but in 2016, for the fourth time, the appointment as the head coach of Lokomotiv followed, and the next year the Russian Cup was won, and a year later the National Championship.
Personal life
Yuri Pavlovich leads a rather active life. In addition to football, he is seriously interested in tennis, attends exhibitions and theatrical performances, has his own YouTube channel and profiles on many social networks. The family occupies a large place in the life of Yuri. He has been married since 1968 to Lyubov Leonidovna. Their son Andrei followed in his father's footsteps and is engaged in coaching.
Undoubtedly, Yuri Semin's bright career will remain in the history of Russian football for many centuries, and we can only enjoy his successes, because to this day he runs his native Lokomotiv.
