Igor Zakharov is a former Soviet and Russian football player, as well as a former Russian football referee. He was only fifty years old, but he had already completed his professional career as a player and judge. When Igor Zakharov entered the field, he acted as a defender.
Carier start
Igor Zakharov was born on June 8, 1966 in the city of Kaluga in the USSR, where he began to get involved in football, having entered football school at an early age and began to play sports there. As a result, he replaced several football academies, the last of which was the academy at the Zorkiy club in the city of Krasnogorsk. It was there that he spent the rest of his youth and in 1984 entered into a professional contract with the club when he was eighteen years old. However, there he spent only one season, having played 22 matches. Already in 1985, Igor Zakharov moved to the SKA Khabarovsk, where he stayed for a rather long time.
Player career
Igor Zakharov showed himself in SKA from the best side, quite quickly becoming one of the key players in the defensive line. He spent five years in the club, playing 151 matches for him - this was the longest period in one club for a player. Here he felt the best, but in 1990 he still changed his club registration, moving to the Ocean, based in Nakhodka. He played 35 matches in his first season, scoring a debut goal in his professional career. However, from the next season, the general situation has changed a little - the USSR championship no longer existed, and Ocean began to play in the Russian championship. Over the next year, the football player played another 45 matches, scoring two goals, and then moved to Luch, where he spent another season. There he entered the field 18 times, scored two goals, and in the summer of 1994 he moved to Wings of the Soviets. There he played another 19 matches, distinguishing himself by three goals, after which in 1995 he reached the peak by signing a contract with Petersburg Zenit. There he played another 17 matches, scored one goal, but did not stay long - in the same year, Igor Zakharov had already moved to Gazovik-Gazprom, for which he played for a year and a half. At his own expense, he recorded 47 more games in the new club and three goals. In 1997, the defender joined the last club in his career - the Krasnodar Kuban. There he played another 11 matches, marked one more goal, and then announced that he was completing his professional career as a football player, although at that time he was only 31 years old.
The beginning of the career of an arbitrator
However, Zakharov was not going to leave football. He decided to become an arbitrator and began to judge at a semi-professional level while working on obtaining a professional license. For three years, he acquired everything necessary to become a full-fledged referee, and in 2000 he defended his first match in the Second Division. During the year he gained enough experience for himself and already in 2001 was admitted to the First Division of Russia. For two years he judged the games of the First Division, until he received the right to become a full-fledged referee in his country. In 2003, he seized his first match at the highest level, having entered the field in a game between Spartak Alania and his former club Wings of the Soviets. From that moment he managed to sue many matches of the Russian Premier League, and in 2005 acquired a FIFA license.
Memorable moments
Igor Zakharov - the judge is far from the most ordinary, and certainly not ordinary. He was remembered by many fans for his unusual behavior at some points, and sometimes far from the best side. For example, in one match, coaches and players suspected that he had entered the field while intoxicated, but Zakharov refused to pass the test, citing a number of factors. As a result, that episode ended harmlessly for him, and until now no one knows if the referee drank before the match, or if representatives of one of the teams were simply offended. I also remember the moment when Zakharov showed the yellow card not to the player at all, but to the dog that ran onto the field during the match. And, of course, the fans will long remember the episode of 2006, when during the match between the clubs “Moscow” and “Dynamo” goalkeeper Sergei Ovchinnikov lost his patience and grabbed the referee for a T-shirt, swearing obscene and trying to prove that he accepted the wrong referee decision. As a result, this incident led to a long disqualification of the country's once main goalkeeper Ovchinnikov, who decided to end his football career without waiting for the opportunity to enter the field again. It is also worth noting that in 2008, Igor Zakharov was recognized as the best arbiter of the year in the country. Moscow, Petersburg, Krasnodar - he managed to play in many Russian cities, and he conducted refereeing activities everywhere. But what drove the referee to end his career so early?
Retirement
Igor Zakharov in 2009 announced his retirement, although he was only 43 years old. What is the reason? Many assumed that he could not stand a bad attitude, as many coaches tried in every possible way to prove his lack of professionalism and incompetence on the field. However, Zakharov himself said that the reason for the completion of the career of an arbitrator was exclusively his state of health. It turns out that he had been suffering from back pain for more than a year, so in 2009 he decided to leave the sport, as he could no longer continue to operate on the field at the same level for an hour and a half.