Now Igor Shalimov recalls how his elder brother literally took his hand, a seven-year-old boy, to the Lokomotiv children's football school. Three years later, the future star of domestic football turned out to be in a more promising Spartak school with his brother’s easy hand. Igor was lucky to study under the guidance of his famous namesake Igor Netto.
Childhood
From the words said by Igor Shalimov, it becomes clear that not all young players are so lucky with the mentors. His coach himself possessed impeccable technique and did not have the habit of showing young football players tasks and exercises in a schematic manner, but he demonstrated them on his own example. In addition, the trainer, who has wide capabilities of the technical arsenal, focused on the technical component of training at the children's school.
Igor Shalimov, whose photo you can see in this publication, recalls how Net took part in sparring with young football players, personally showed how to handle the ball, how to give it to a partner, and even took part in square games. The hero of our publication absorbed the experience of Igor Netto, like a sponge. He quickly mastered the technique of receiving the ball on his chest and thigh, he learned how to tame the ball with one movement, and also mastered all the subtleties and wisdom of the passes. The Spartak school has always instilled a culture of pass into its pupils. Since childhood, players knew under which foot it is more convenient to give the ball to a partner, with what force to transfer and how to send the ball so that he does not jump in front of his friend’s feet.
Career at Spartak
Then everything was like everyone else: the Spartak youth team, the transition of the midfielder to the adult team, the call to the national team and, it would seem, great prospects. Since the requirements in the children's school, in the Spartak double and in the adult team were almost the same, Igor immediately got used to it and did not experience problems with adaptation in the adult team.
However, the crumbling Union did not bode well for the players playing in the domestic championship. In addition, feeling in himself the strength to reach new heights, Igor Shalimov decides to go to conquer one of the most powerful European championships.
The beginning of a European career
It was a big risk, because Italy at that moment was not particularly supportive of the venerable stars of the former Soviet Union. What can we say about the 22-year-old footballer who does not have international titles behind him? Therefore, Igor Shalimov made the only right decision. Spartak midfielder decides to accept the offer of the modest club “Foggia” and in 1991 moved to the Apennine Peninsula. From now on, he will never return to his homeland as a player.
Igor Shalimov recalls that when they were boys, they were sometimes allowed to watch the games of the first team, whose players seemed celestials, from the balcony. And now the young football player has gone to the best league in the world, where they played Maradona, Marco Van Basten, Ruud Gullit, Frank Rikard.
Everything was different there, if we talk about organizational football moments and management. Even in a modest club like Foggia, Igor could feel like a real star, he was constantly stopped on the street, asked for an autograph, recognized, arranged for an interview. Italy has a completely different attitude to the game in general and to football players in particular. Tiffosi just live and breathe football. Everything was new, but the close attention of the sports community spurred Shalimov. He gave a fantastic first season and earned the title of best legionnaire. It was like in a dream.
However, it is predictable that the players in the new teams will decline during the second season, and the club management advised to go on lease in order not to lose the game practice. The third season in the Italian championship did not ask Igor at all. Entering the field with Inter Milan, the football player felt that his strength seemed to be exhausted. For him, it was akin to a disaster, because Igor could not afford to be on the sidelines. He was angry, did not train according to his schedule in the hope of proving something to the coaching staff, but again and again remained on the bench.
Fatal mistake
It is now Igor Shalimov who realizes his main mistake: he did not need to change the league and leave to play for the German Duisburg. He believes that a season or two in any team of the Italian championship would put everything in its place. In the end, Igor could gain invaluable experience and temper character. But in the Bundesliga, his football career began to decline. Increasingly, he began to notice behind himself that he saw the situation on the field not with the eyes of a football player, but with the eyes of a coach.
Coaching
For the first time, Shalimov accepted a team at the age of 34. Igor says that if a player on the football field begins to compare himself with other players, then it is time for him to finish the game practice and move on to coaching. During his coaching career, he managed to work with the women's football team of Russia. But the proposal, which was received in 2015 from a long-time acquaintance of Shalimov Sergey Nikolaevich Galitsky, the owner of the Krasnodar football club, was flattering and attractive. As they say, such proposals are not accepted to refuse.
Even now, as a coach of the Krasnodar-2 team, Igor Shalimov gratefully recalls Igor Neto and those 7 years that he spent as a boy under the guidance of a great mentor in a Spartak school. Without a vaccinated technical base, he simply would not have been able to become a cool football player, the services of which many foreign clubs would like to resort to.
Conclusion
Igor Shalimov, whose personal life is not full of sensations, does not like to share his feelings with the press, despite the fact that he was married twice. The most famous is the second marriage with the writer Oksana Robsky. A short married life with a socialite lasted only six months. Since October 2008, Shalimov was no longer in official relations.