Like any of the sports journalists, I met and talked with Yartsev more than once. I didn’t go for the national team and teams – we talked more often during the broadcasts on the radio. But even where there seems to be no match, where you can talk calmly, it was obvious how he passes through himself absolutely everything related to the game.
Almost every second person who writes about Yartsev today uses the phrase “bare nerve”. Yes, it already looks like a stamp, but in relation to Georgy Yartsev, this is a very accurate definition. Without any banality.
And after all, when he threw gloves in Portugal in that match where we flew 1:7, it was not an ostentatious hysteria – it was exactly that nerve.
He was ready for any job, he was ready for any situation. He took Spartak, which lost gold in 1995 and from which Oleg Romantsev left for the national team, and he returned the gold to him a year later, in the gold match against Alania Vladikavkaz. At the same time, he always understood that Oleg Ivanovich would return – and will have to move up. But he never made any conditions.
There is such a thing as debt. And Yartsev knew it very well. Beskov was sent in the 70s from Dynamo to Spartak – and he saved the red-and-whites. In the same way, Yartsev rushed in the late 90s from Spartak to save Dynamo. Colors weren’t that important when there was duty and there was work to be done.
Today the championship kicked off in Khimki with a match between local “Moscow residents” and visiting guests from St. Petersburg. Already before the game there was a banner in memory of Yartsev. And this is very correct. The departed heroes do not have club colors – they are all in our memory. They made football exactly as sincere as we remember it.
Thank you, Georgy Alexandrovich!
Source: Sovsport
