Igor Akinfeev was born on April 8, 1986 in Vidnoye, near Moscow. The future football player’s father worked as a truck driver, and his mother worked as a kindergarten teacher.
His father brought Igor to the CSKA sports section at the age of four. He was the smallest in the group and did not like to run. Therefore, at the second training session, Igor stood in the goal, although the ball seemed very big to him.
“Dad went to the field to talk to the coach, and I looked out from behind the wall and thought: damn, there are such moose running around there, how can I play with them? I’ll probably never forget this moment,” the footballer recalled.
Akinfeev first went abroad at the age of 10. He went to an international training camp in Yugoslavia and really impressed the coach Milyan Milyanovich, who even then said that Igor is Yashin’s successor.
At the age of 15, Akinfeev got into a fight on a field in Kaliningrad. He got into the very heap and fought off the entire stadium:
“We played with the local Baltika, passions were boiling on the field, the referee, as usual, helped the hosts. As a result, the players became so angry that a fight broke out at the end of the match. Not just a brawl, but a real mess. I ran into the very heap. Our team stood in the center circle and fought off the entire stadium.”
Akinfeev spent his entire career at CSKA, becoming a club legend. But he holds an offensive anti-record. Over the course of 11 years and 1 day from November 21, 2006 to November 22, 2017, he missed goals in 43 consecutive Champions League matches (85 goals).
Akinfeev is friends with the lead singer of the group “Hands Up” Sergei Zhukov. They are family friends and recorded songs together — “My Friend” and “Summer Evening”. In 2012, Akinfeev starred in the New Year’s video “Open the door for me” by the group “Hands Up”.
“We value shared plans and vacations. It’s doubly wonderful that our wives and children are friends regardless of us,” Zhukov said.
Akinfeev played in the series “Evgenich”, which was created by Zhukov. The plot is based on the life of a producer and composer who once wrote hits that boomed in the 90s. Igor even began to sing, in the style of Bob Marley:
Akinfeev is married to Ekaterina Gerun. The girl was born in Kyiv and was a participant in the Miss Ukraine contest, and also worked as a professional model. In 2014, she gave birth to her husband’s first child, son Danil. A year later, a daughter, Evangelina, appeared in the family.
If you are interested in learning more about Akinfeev’s sports career, read our material about the CSKA legend.