THE WONDER OF VALERIY

GARRY WHITE GOES BACK IN TIME TO RECALL THE EXPLOITS OF LEGENDARY FORMER DYNAMO KYIU AND SOVIET UNITED BOSS VALERIY LOBANOVSKYI.

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SO, Valeriy Lobanovskyi. I wonder if his mates called him Val? Nah, probably not. But still, his first name was more reminiscent of one of the old ladies at my Nan's lunchtime bingo club than an actual football manager. Forgive the spelling, but you couldn't imagine Valeriy Clough or Valeriy Robson, could you?

It gave us kids a laugh, though. The Serbian name 'Slobodan' did something similar around the same time, albeit for different reasons. In case you're wondering, that's Slobodan Zivojinovic (tennis player and Wimbledon semifinalist) and not Milosevic (Serbian political leader and indicted war criminal).

By way of mitigation, when you are 11 the world is still a big place, and no doubt it is still just about fair game to laugh at cultural and linguistic differences. At least it was in the 80s!

But back to Valeriy. He always looked stern and serious-faced in that peculiar, foreboding Soviet way. We would have called him Russian then, in a lazy catchall for anything between the 6,200 miles from the Lithuanian border to the Bering Strait.

Us kids, and probably plenty of adults, were then still ignorant of the fact that Dynamo Kyiv was actually in Ukraine and that was where the majority of the USSR's best players came from.

Not just the players but Lobanovskyi as well. Their ruddy-faced manager had also turned out twice as a player for the national team as a fresh-faced (surely?) 21-year-old in 1960.

When I first discovered him in the Soviet dugout at the ill-fated (for England fans at least) 1988 European Championships, he reminded me of the darts player John Lowe. Probably no coincidence given that Lowe was known by the nickname of 'Old Stoneface'.

But when I search for Lobanovskyi now, his black-and-white Wikipedia picture is incongruously more reminiscent of Lord Sugar, late of Basildon and The Apprentice.