22 October: Yashin, the Black Spider

Lev Yashin

Football and ice

As a teenager he worked in a factory during the war and joined Dynamo Moscow in 1949. At first they would not let him play football and put him in goal for the club's ice hockey team, with whom he won the Soviet Cup. When he got his chance in football, he did not let it go for twenty years.

A different kind of goalkeeper

Always in black, tall and with endless arms, he was nicknamed the Black Spider. But his real revolution was something else: he came off his line, shouted orders at his defence, played with his feet and threw the ball out quickly to start counter-attacks. He was a modern goalkeeper when goalkeepers barely left their line.

With the Soviet Union he won Olympic gold in Melbourne in 1956 and the first European Championship, in Paris in 1960. In 1963, after a great display at Wembley in the English FA's centenary match, he won the Ballon d'Or.

The end

He said goodbye in 1971 with a testimonial in Moscow in front of more than a hundred thousand people. Years later he had a leg amputated because of illness, and he died in 1990, aged sixty.

Also born on 22 October

Bert Trautmann, the goalkeeper with the broken neck

🎂 would have turned 103

A German paratrooper in the Second World War, he was taken prisoner and sent to a camp in England. When the war ended he decided to stay and ended up as Manchester City's goalkeeper, despite the initial hostility of many fans.

In the 1956 FA Cup final, with less than twenty minutes left, he dived at a forward's feet and took a knee to the neck. He played on, as there were no substitutes then, and saved everything that came his way. City won. Days later X-rays showed he had broken a vertebra in his neck.

Born22 October 1923

Died19 July 2013

CountryGermany

Positiongoalkeeper

Clubs

• TuRa Bremen since 1931
• St Helens Town A.F.C. 1948-1949
• Manchester City Football Club 1949-1964
• AFC Telford United 1964
• Telford United F.C. 1964

Other awards

Salón de la Fama del Deporte AlemánNational Sports Badge 1934Premio Georg von Opel 1999Oficial de la Orden del Imperio Británico 2004Salón de la Fama del fútbol inglés 2005

↻ Dates, clubs and individual awards come from Wikidata and update themselves

Arsène Wenger, the man behind the Invincibles

🎂 turns 77

An Alsatian coach who at Monaco discovered George Weah, born on 1 October, and who in 1996 arrived at Arsenal almost as an unknown. He stayed twenty-two years. He won three Premier League titles and seven FA Cups, and in 2003-04 his team won the league without losing a single game: the Invincibles.

Born22 October 1949

CountryFrance

Positiondefender, sweeper

Clubs

• AS Mutzig 1969-1973 · 9 goals
• FC Mulhouse 1973-1975 · 4 goals
• ASPV Strasbourg 1975-1978
• Racing Estrasburgo 1978-1981

Other awards

Honorary Officer of the Order of the British EmpireCaballero de la Orden Nacional de la Legión de Honor 2002Oficial de la Orden Nacional de la Legión de Honor 2019

↻ Dates, clubs and individual awards come from Wikidata and update themselves

🔴⚪ Sporting Gijón players born this day

They played for Sporting Gijón and were born on this same day. There is only their data here: we would rather name them than leave them out, and rather give the bare facts than invent a story.

Another 46 internationally known footballers were born on this day. We do not list them for the sake of it: only those with a story to tell make it here.

Dates, clubs, individual awards and photos come from Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons, under free licences, and update themselves. Ages are not written anywhere: they are calculated the moment you open the page, so this page always shows the right age, this year and twenty years from now. If any of these players signs for another club or wins an award, their profile picks it up on its own. What is written by hand is the story and the judgement: who the day belongs to, and why.