Fyodor Cherenkov was born in Moscow into a simple Soviet family: his mother worked in the housing office, his father worked at an aircraft factory. Fedor started playing at the age of three, studied at the Kuntsevo school, and at the age of 12 he moved to Spartak.
Spartak fan who became a club legend
Fedor’s father took him to matches, and the boy, following his father, became a Spartak fan.. In 1977, the young man’s dream came true — Nikolai Starostin invited him to join Spartak. Then coach Konstantin Beskov took the 19-year-old promising midfielder to the main team.
In 1978, Cherenkov made his debut for the first team of Spartak. . Back then, few could have imagined that the puny guy (174 cm tall and weighing 58 kg) would become the leader of the “red-whites”.
“Even as a child, playing with guys much older in age, I realized: in order to beat a physically more powerful opponent, you need to be able to predict his moves, quickly navigate the game environment, and always have one or two dribbling feints in reserve,” said Cherenkov .
For many years, Cherenkov remained the leader of Spartak and was recognized several times as the best football player in the USSR. Cherenkov played his farewell match on August 23, 1994, when Spartak met with the Italian Parma.
Before the match, a welcoming letter to Cherenkov from Russian President Boris Yeltsin was read out; a gift was attached to the letter — three-room apartment in Moscow. And Tamara Gverdtsiteli performed her famous song “Vivat, King, Vivat!”
Mental illness and death
After his career ended, Cherenkov’s health rapidly deteriorated. Problems appeared during my career: in 1984, doctors diagnosed the football player with a mental disorder, which caused severe depression.
That year, Cherenkov had an attack — he threw a tantrum in a cafeteria in Tbilisi. The football player shouted that they wanted to poison him and asked everyone to hide. Wanting to hide from non-existent enemies, the player Fedor did not jump from the 16th floor of the hotel.
“It seems to me that if the treatment had been completed, perhaps the disease would have gone away altogether,” said the athlete’s brother. “Everything had to be done in accordance with the doctor’s strict instructions — to bring the patient to real improvement. It was possible. But he didn’t treat doctors very well and returned to Spartak at the first opportunity — be it during his career or playing for veterans.”
At the end of his career, Cherenkov worked briefly with the youth of Spartak, but in the future he could not cope with the work of a coach. He lived quietly, taking part in various veterans’ tournaments.
In the early 2000s, Cherenkov fell into a deep depression and twice tried to commit suicide. Religion saved him from despair: the midfielder went to a monastery near Ivanovo, communicated with the abbot, and worked as a laborer. To the surprise of his relatives, Fedor felt better there, but he could not completely overcome the illness.
On September 22, 2014, Cherenkov lost consciousness at his entrance and was taken to the clinic in serious condition. Two weeks later he died; experts named a brain tumor as the probable cause of death. Cherenkov was buried at the Troekurovsky cemetery in Moscow, and more than 15 thousand people came to say goodbye to the legend.