The new coach of handball “Zilant” – about the Soviet past and Kazan present
football developed”” height=”480″ width=”720″/>Alexander Alekseev at the workplace. Photo: Presented by the press service of the Russian Handball Federation
The Kazan handball club “Zilant” started confidently in the Russian championship among major league teams, winning six victories. In addition, he won one game at the National Cup. Before the second game of the tournament in Rostov-on-Don, Kazan head coach Alexander Alekseev gave an interview to Realnoe Vremya.
“I wasn’t always happy with my players’ attitude towards the games”
— Alexander Mikhailovich, the Kazan team already won in Rostov, and quite confidently. It turns out that you don’t have to worry about the result?
— First, I’ll clarify that we won two victories at the start of the national championship in Rostov-on-Don at the time when I was studying for a coaching license. At that moment, my players, under the guidance of the coaching staff, beat the Rostovites, and only then I joined the team. And I can note that I was not always happy with the players’ attitude towards the games. There will be a mood — there will be a positive result, but in our first matches with Voronezh and Belgorod we felt a certain lack of tune-up, which is why we didn’t play the best matches, although we won them. On the other hand, I understand that the process of grinding in the players and coaching staff is underway.
— Judging by the table, two teams have already outlined their claims for the season. In addition to the Kazan team, this is also MSSUOR No. 2 – the Academy, with which they will have their next meeting in the national championship.
— On the one hand, yes, and after Rostov we have to continue the series of away matches, playing MSSUOR away. But I wouldn’t discount Omsk, which has simply played the least so far.
— Your playing and coaching careers took place during the Soviet era. Tell us how you got into handball?
“The path to it was winding, because I tried athletics, chess, and football and hockey. Now the climate has changed, and it’s hard to imagine the weather in Volgograd making it possible to fill the ice and shoot the puck. But we had frosts of 30 degrees, which even made it possible to cancel school lessons. And if you remember the archival footage of the Battle of Stalingrad, the Germans frostbitten in every sense at minus 40… Believe me, in Volgograd at the turn of the 60s and 70s there were hockey battles in the courtyards, since the ice sports palace had artificial ice then It hasn’t happened yet. But a friend got me into handball in 1973, when I was 12 years old, and from then on I devoted 50 years to this game.
Zilant started the national championship with six victories. Maxim Platonov / realnoevremya.ru
“I remember Kazan, where my peer Rafael Gazimov stood out in the lineup”
— I’m trying to imagine Volgograd in the mid-1970s. The football team was called “Barricade”, Vanin, Guzenko, and two Tatars, Rakhimov and Faizullin, began their careers here. The guys from your generation born in 1960-1962 are looking at all this – Nikitin, Surovikin, Tamozhnikov, Chupin. Why didn’t you go to football??
— And anyone who views Volgograd in a plane knows the answer to this question, since the city is not looped in space, it seems to stretch. And from my place of residence to the area where football developed was probably about 50 kilometers to the south. My good friend Yuri Gugnyaev played football, but then, like me, he came to handball, forming a dynasty, since then his son Nikita Gugnyaev came to handball.
We were lucky, I think that coach Leonid Korostashevich came from Ukraine, who graduated from a sports university in Omsk, and he began to develop handball for those, like me, who were not ready to “throw themselves at the football barricades.” Korostashevich, may he rest in heaven, passed away this year; he was young, energetic, a handball enthusiast, and he infected us with his love for it.
At the same time, yard sports, I repeat, we played football and hockey either completely independently, or under the guidance of enthusiasts, and not professional coaches, allowed us to develop harmoniously, master basic motor skills through play, and different muscle groups were involved in different games, so my Coming to handball at the age of 12 cannot be perceived from the point of view of the current set of years from seven to eight. We came to handball as strong, physically mature boys.
— By the way, I noticed that Korostashevich, who is called the father of Volgograd handball, managed to captivate Viktor Litvyak, Pyotr Lyubenko, and fellow countrymen from the Chernigov region with his enthusiasm for the development of this sport on the Volga.
— Yes, I’ll also note that Litvyak even managed to play in the first team of “Kaustik”, and the fact that Korostashevich studied in Omsk allowed him to invite Anatoly Ivanov, an acquaintance from there, to the position of second coach, but he also managed to play. At the same time, the children’s and youth school was developing, its students joined the team, and in 1976 the team began playing in the championship of the then RSFSR with the prospect of becoming part of the participants in the USSR Championship in the first league. We played there at the championship of sports societies, I remember competitions in “Burevestnik”, and “Harvest”, and “Labor”.
I remember Gorky, Bryansk was there, an original, interesting team was formed there, Voronezh was and remains, Kazan is the same, with coach Kremlev, whose team included my peer Rafael Gazimov, who subsequently led the local team for a long time.
The Zilants’ next game will take place against their main competitor MSSUOR-Academy. Maxim Platonov / realnoevremya.ru
“I also caught the legendary women’s handball coach Evgeniy Trefilov as a player”
— Handball in Astrakhan, and then Volgograd, essentially two provincial cities in the USSR, managed to break into the Soviet elite, in opposition to teams that represented the current national teams of the country – Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania. Then the teams were ahead of Moldova, Uzbekistan, Estonia, which remained at the level of the first league.
– It’s a sum of factors. Among our rivals initially was Astrakhan, which at that time was developing handball in provincial Akhtubinsk, but then moved to the regional center. I also caught the legendary women’s handball coach Evgeniy Trefilov as a player. The founding father of Astrakhan handball is Gladchenko Vladimir Aleksandrovich, who took up the development of handball after he retired from the army, being a pilot by military profession. But he infected those around him with his enthusiasm, which brought results.
To be honest, in the initial stages, Olympic champion Vladimir Maksimov, who oversaw the development of handball in the RSFSR, helped us a lot. In addition, the school started working, we slowly educated our own, those who were recruited to the RSFSR national team, like Valery Lutsenko, Alexander Taranov. They seemed to serve as a foundation for those who would rise higher on their shoulders, reaching the level of the USSR national team, and then en masse – to the Russian national team. Alas, I myself did not reach this level, because at the age of 21 I suffered a meniscus injury, even surgery did not allow me to return to professional sports, and I slowly switched to coaching children. By the way, you didn’t mention, but after us Voronezh also began to rise, the only thing is that it did not have time to loudly declare itself even during the existence of the Union.
And this is correct, since at some point handball in the RSFSR developed only in Moscow and Leningrad, and of the provincial teams only Krasnodar and Chelyabinsk played in the major league. If you remember all this, you can fill a whole book’s worth of memories.
— And this is important, I think, since the champion path of development of sports during the USSR was often built on the fact that a team was created based on visiting athletes. A sports school opened nearby, and after a while its students could join their team and others.
– This is true, although in Volgograd they took a slightly different path, first creating a sports school in 1972, after which a team arose, and when it began to be replenished with local students, young handball players from the same Russian outback began to come to help them, this is Izhevsk, and Omsk, and Yaroslavl, and already in Volgograd, together with local students, all created the glory of our “Kaustik”.
So far this season, Kazan handball players have not experienced the bitterness of defeat. Maxim Platonov / realnoevremya.ru
In our country, handball was developing before Korostashevich, for example, Mikhail Stepanovich Mishin worked successfully, handball was developing in universities where there were student teams, but it was Leonid Alekseevich who gave the impetus to the transition to another, higher, professional level. By professional I can also call our way of leaving local students at the disposal of the team, avoiding military conscription, when the teams of the Armed Forces society, less often the most promising ones, went to the Dynamo society. Often with ends. We had a military training ground in Volgograd, Korostashevich learned about the opportunities that the presence of this training ground provided, as a result, young players took the young fighter course there, took the oath, and returned to their home team, having been seconded to it by the military leadership. It is clear that we participated in any army competitions, right up to the Armed Forces Championships. When CSKA paid attention to the players of our team, the USSR had already collapsed and the possibilities of conscription into the army were not the same as in Soviet times, and soon the army club itself disintegrated, and its base was transported to the city of Chekhov.
(The ending follows)
Interviewed by Jaudat Abdullin
Sport Tatarstan
