El Sardinero, in Cantabria, was home to some of the most impressive footballers of the Spanish La Liga back in the 1990s. The local side, Racing Santander (that is currently on the verge of being relegated to the Spanish football third tier), enjoyed some outstanding seasons back in those days and there were at least two Russian footballers who made an outstanding contribution to that unparallel success of Los Racinguistas: Dmitri Radchenko and Dmitri Popov.
The career of these two Russian players is intimately connected with before and during their stint at Racing Santander. In an interview conceded sometime ago, Dmitri Popov admitted that his fellow countryman and former Spartak Moscow’s teammate, Dmitri Radchenko, was the reason why he decided to try his luck at the Cantabrian team. Together with Radchenko, Popov was one of the most important players at Oleg Romantsev’s highly synchronized Spartak from the early 1990s, but the disruption of the USSR, the consequent mess that flooded the countries that once were part of the newly formed CIS and the fact that his contract with the Moscow’s team was nearing the end almost forced Popov to try his luck elsewhere, away from the old Soviet empire.
The talented former Spartak’s midfielder arrived at Santander in 1993 and besides Radchenko, he found someone else who helped him with his adaption to such a new and completely different reality: the former Soviet international Andrei Zygmantovich, who had arrived at Cantabria one year before them. Despite having people he knew around, the adaption hit Dmitri Popov pretty hard. The Spanish “world” was a complete maze for the Yaroslavl-born player, who, in that very same interview mentioned above, admitted that if it wasn’t for help of the Basque head coach, Javier Irureta, he would have probably failed to adapt to his new life: “Me costó. Todo era distinto. El idioma, la forma de entrenar, de vivir… En Rusia comía con el equipo en 15 minutos. En España, tras 15 minutos no teníamos ni agua ni pan en la mesa. En Moscú entrenaba una hora y media. En Santander, dos horas y media o tres, y mucho tiempo sin balón. Nos íbamos al bosque a correr. Eso en Rusia era impensable. (…) Si yo hubiera llegado a Santander con otro técnico, me habría costado todo mucho más. Tuvo (Javier Irureta) mucha paciencia con nosotros. Nos llamaba aparte y nos explicaba qué exactamente es lo que debíamos hacer.”
Regardless of all the adaptation difficulties he may have found, Dmitri Popov managed to display all of his talent with Racing. He was a unique footballer, a truly complete midfielder capable of disrupting the opponent’s defensive strategy with a single pass or through a pinpoint assist to one of his teammates.
Popov, who by the way had learnt Spanish quite easily, took some time to make a strong stand at the team, but once he did, he became, together with Radchenko, probably the most important players of the then recently promoted Racing Santander. Los Racinguistas finished the 1993-94 season in a very respectable 8th place of the table and proved to be a major headache to the Spanish football big dogs (Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid), especially when playing at El Sardinero in front of something like twenty thousand enthusiastic supporters. It was precisely against Real Madrid, in the following season, that Popov had a memorable match by scoring one of his team’s three goals and by assisting Esteban Torre for the second goal. Racing won the match 3-1 but such outcome was certainly not in people’s minds during the first-half, while Real Madrid was in control of the operations. The Chilean super striker Ivan Zamorano opened the score for Los Merengues still during the first-half but Popov and his pairs showed some great determination after the break and built an historical and solid win. Radchenko took the equalizer with a powerful header before Popov assisted Esteban Torre for Racing’s second of the night. But that was not all, as there was still time for a fantastic combination between the Russian dynamic duo that ended with a superb finish by Racing’s number 9, Dmitri Popov, who placed a powerful shot that offered no chances to a hopeless Francisco Buyo.
The talented midfielder forged at FC Shinnik’s academy was, as far as I am concerned, one of the most underrated midfielders of his generation. Popov had a unique talent and an unusual way of understanding the game, as he always seemed to be one step ahead of all the other players involved in the match. Dmitri Popov used to dictate both the time and the pace of his team’s attacking movements and because of that it is fair to claim that if it wasn’t for their 5ft8 Russian maestro, the Cantabrian orchestra would have not been so flawlessly tuned back in those days.
Follow Joel Amorim on Twitter: @Vostok1981
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