VALERIY LOBANOVSKYI

In the unlikely event that you’ve ever won an argument with Big Dave down the pub by reeling off an Opta stat, or explained the relative merits of ‘ expected goals’ to your dad, then there’s only one man to thank.

Valeriy Lobanovskyi, a liberated left- winger in his playing days, always sought perfection. As a coach, the former maths prodigy found in Professor Anatoliy Zelentsov a kindred spirit whose desire to apply collective statistical analysis to football was met with lukewarm approval before the pair first united at Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk in 1972, two years before arriving in Kiev.

“You know, if not for you,” Lobanovskyi once declared to Zelentsov at a party, “I might not have come off as a coach. I owe you my skills, formation, knowledge, understanding and realisation of football.”

When the taciturn tactician explained that “a team that commits errors in no more than 15 to 18 per cent of its acts is unbeatable” or “if a midfielder has fulfilled 60 technical and tactical actions in the course of the match, then he hasn’t pulled his weight”, the figures weren’t plucked from the crisp Kiev air.

In Zelentsov’s lab, the pair would pore over endless statistical streams. “All life,” conceded Lobanovskyi, “is a number.”

The Ukrainian demanded ‘ universality’ from players, producing Oleg Blokhin, Igor Belanov and Andriy Shevchenko. Across a combined 21 years as Kiev coach – plus a spell leading the USSR, with whom he reached the final of Euro 88 – Lobanovskyi won just the 30 major honours, including the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1975 and 1986. It makes him the 20th century’s most decorated manager.

The second of those, a 3- 0 final demolition of Atletico Madrid, offered Lobanovskyi’s high mark. The Soviets’ second goal that evening – finished by former Ballon d’or winner Blokhin – featured no- look passes from players who instinctively knew all their team- mates’ runs. It proved the perfect symbiosis between the manager’s chess- like system and his side’s outrageous collective talent.

“I think...” Oleksandr Khapsalys, a Dynamo midfielder from the late 1970s, once began during a team talk. He was immediately cut off by Lobanovskyi.

“Don’t think! I do the thinking for you. Play!”