Rinat Dasayev

Rinat Fayzrakhmanovich Dasayev (, ; born 13 June 1957) is a Russian football coach and a former goalkeeper.

Throughout his club career, he played for Volgar Astrakhan, Spartak Moscow and Sevilla. At international level, he played at three World Cups with the Soviet national team, also winning a bronze medal at the 1980 Summer Olympics and a runners-up medal at UEFA Euro 1988.

Regarded as one of the best goalkeepers in the world during the 1980s, he is considered the second-best Soviet goalkeeper ever behind Lev Yashin. He was awarded the title of the World's Best Goalkeeper of the Year award in 1988 by the IFFHS. In a 1999 poll by the same organisation, he was elected the sixteenth greatest European goalkeeper of the twentieth century, alongside Gianpiero Combi, and the seventeenth greatest goalkeeper of the century. A tall and well-rounded goalkeeper with a slender physique, he possessed an excellent positional sense, and often positioned himself in very deep positions, rarely straying from his goal-line, and preferring to remain between the posts throughout the course of a match. as well as his ability to organise his defence. Considered to be the goalkeeping heir of Lev Yashin in Soviet football, he often drew wide praise for his ability in the press. However, critical opinion of Dasayev was occasionally divided; Italian sports journalist Gianni Brera, for example, believed that he was overrated in the media.

After retirement Dasayev retired from professional football in the early 1990s, following his time with Sevilla. In 1993, he became the goalkeeping coach of Sevilla under the tuner of Luis Aragonés as coach and of Sevilla Atlético for a season. In 2001, he traveled to Vietnam to play some friendly matches between legend players of Spartak Moscow and Hanoi XI, which ended 3–3. He was appointed as the 2008 UEFA Champions League Final Ambassador. Dasayev was a member of Russia's committee that won the bid to hold the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Unlike most of other legends and football pundits in Russia following Russia's quarter-finals feat in 2018 World Cup, Dasayev criticized the Russian team and believed quarter-finals can't be considered as an achievement.

He had to retire from active coaching in late 2018 due to knee injuries and currently works as goalkeeping consultant with FC Spartak-2 Moscow and Spartak's youth teams.

Personal life

Dasayev is a Muslim, an ethnic Tatar.

During his stint at Sevilla FC, the club's fans nicknamed him "Rafaé", since they struggled to pronounce his surname.

Honours Spartak Moscow Soviet Top League: 1979, 1987; runner-up: 1980, 1981, 1983, 1984, 1985 Soviet Cup runner-up: 1981

Soviet Union UEFA European Football Championship runner-up: 1988

Individual The best 33 football players of the Soviet Union (10): No. 1 (1979–1983, 1985–1988); No. 2 (1984) Soviet Footballer of the Year: 1982 Soviet Goalkeeper of the Year Award (5) Guerin Sportivo All-Star Team: 1982, 1983, 1986 ADN Eastern European Footballer of the Season: 1983 Onze Mondial: 1983, 1988 World Soccer World XI: 1984, 1986, 1987 IFFHS World's Best Goalkeeper: 1988 UEFA Jubilee Poll (2004): #97 Golden Foot Legends Award: 2015 FIFA 100