Victor Maslov

Victor Maslov

Personal information
Full name	Victor Aleksandrovich Maslov
Date of birth	27 April 1910
Place of birth	Moscow, Russian Empire
Date of death	11 May 1977 (aged 67)
Place of death	Moscow, Russian SFSR
Senior career*
Years	Team	Apps^†	(Gls)^†
1930	RDPK Moscow	?	(?)
1931–40	FC Torpedo Moscow[1]	?	(?)
1941	FC Profsoyuz-1 Moscow[2]	?	(?)
1941–42	FC Torpedo Moscow	?	(?)
Teams managed
1942–48	FC Torpedo Moscow
1949–1951	Torpedo Gorky
1954–1955	FC FShM Moscow
1956	Burevestnik Chişinău
1957–61	FC Torpedo Moscow
1962–63	FC SKA Rostov-na-Donu
1964–1970	FC Dynamo Kyiv
1971–73	FC Torpedo Moscow
1975	FC Ararat Yerevan
* Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only. † Appearances (goals)

Victor Aleksandrovich Maslov (Russian: Виктор Александрович Маслов; April 27, 1910 in Moscow – May 11, 1977) was a Soviet Russian footballer and coach. He was especially notable during his coaching career. He won numerous USSR Championships with clubs Torpedo Moscow, Dynamo Kyiv, and one with FC Ararat Yerevan.^[3] The second best coach in history of Dynamo Kyiv after Valeriy Lobanovsky.

He is often seen as being one of the most innovative and influential football managers of all-time. He was the first to experiment with players' nutrition, and invented the 4-4-2 formation, along with the notion of pressing, which, in the words of Jonathan Wilson "may be seen as the birth of modern football".^[4] Wilson credits Maslov as one of the progenitors of the pressing game. This was a key development, as before Maslov, teams tended to allow their opponents more time on the ball, whereas Maslov's strategy of pressing denied players this time and space, and led to the game based more on speed and fitness that is common across the top European and South American leagues today.

References

1. Previous names of Torpedo were AMO and ZiS (Stalin Memorial Plant).
2. In 1941 Torpedo, Lokomotiv, Metallurg, and Krylya Sovetov were merged and reorganized into Profsoyuz-1 and Profsoyuz-2 competing in the same league.
3. "Victor Maslov did not avoid rough words, if the footballers did not understand the point of the game" – Information Page on Victor Maslov (Russian)
4. guardian.co.uk – The end of forward thinking