Leonid Slutsky is a coach and for a very short period a footballer who represented first the USSR and then Russia. He is still quite young for a coach - he was only 45 years old. When Slutsky was a football player, he acted as a goalkeeper. Slutsky is a coach who is one of the most famous in Russia.
Short career of a football player
Slutsky is a coach known to every person in Russia, but how many people remember him as a player? Most likely, almost no one, and there are reasons for this. The fact is that Leonid’s career did not work out at all due to household injury. He was born on May 4, 1971 in the city of Volgograd in the Soviet Union and began playing sports at school. As a result, he ended up at the sports academy of the newly formed Zvezda club from the Settlement. He worked there until 1989, when he was offered a professional contract - after all, Slutsky was already eighteen years old. He quickly began to gain form, got into the starting lineup and even spent 13 matches at a professional level when an incident fatal for his career happened. Neighbor Leonid asked him to remove the frightened cat from the tree, and the boy could not refuse. However, it all ended in failure - a branch broke off under Slutsky, he tried to grab another, which also broke off. As a result, he landed on his knee, falling from the height of the third floor. At that time, medicine could not do much with this, and Leonid's career came to an end. Doctors said that he would not be able to bend his leg at all, but the stubbornness of the young man allowed him to slowly and painfully develop his leg so that it could be used in the future. Naturally, he could no longer be a player, but he set himself the goal of becoming a coach. It is in this role that Slutsky is known to everyone - the coach from him turned out to be very good.
The beginning of a career coach
How did coach Slutsky come into being? The biography of the football player fits in one paragraph, but the biography of the coach is much more impressive. When Leonid was 29 years old, he began to practice coaching. The first place of his work was the modest Olimpia from his native Volgograd, where he got a job as a youth coach, but pretty quickly it became clear that Slutsky was capable of more. Therefore, he worked there all year 2000, and then began to obtain a professional license. As a result, by January 2002, he had the right to train professional clubs - thus began his journey to the top.
Uralan
The first club that Slutsky coached was Uralan, but even there he did not immediately begin full-fledged activities. At first he was appointed coach of the club’s youth, and in this position he worked for almost two years - in October 2003, the club’s current coach was fired, and Slutsky was given a chance. He accepted the team and coached it until the summer of 2004 - during this time, Uralan, unfortunately, did not really add. In 25 matches led by Slutsky, the club played 24 matches, of which only six were won. 23 points in 24 games - this was far from the most impressive indicator, so Leonid moved to another club, namely to Moscow.
Transition to Moscow
Naturally, Slutsky didn’t get the head coach position right away either: during the first season he trained the Moscow double in the club, but in the summer of 2005 he was promoted to become the head coach. He stayed at the helm of this club longer - a little over two years. During this time, he managed to achieve impressive results: out of 95 matches, he managed to win 44, which was the beginning of his ascent to the top. This result was the best not only for Slutsky, but also for Moscow, which for the first time in history got into Eurocups. However, the club management long before the end of the season decided to terminate the contract with the coach for unknown reasons. Therefore, in the winter of 2007 Slutsky was forced to look for a new job.
One more step to success in Wings of the Soviets
The new club, with which Leonid Slutsky signed a contract in December 2007, was Wings of the Soviets - this is the first team that the coach headed immediately, not starting from the double. Slutsky’s results here were not as impressive as in Moscow, but still quite impressive - victory was won in 22 of 59 matches, and the club managed to get into the Europa League. After two years at the club, Slutsky wrote a letter of resignation in October 2009. It was then that information began to appear in the press that Leonid Slutsky was the CSKA coach. After a couple of weeks, it became clear that this was true.
Top career
So, in October 2009, Slutsky Leonid changed his club registration again. The CSKA coach, as soon as he was appointed to his post, immediately set himself and his players the highest goals. In his first season, he took second place in the Russian Championship, in the second he won the Russian Cup, in the third he took third place in the championship, and only in the fourth year of his stay at the helm of the club could he win the Russian Championship. In the same year, the club won the Cup, as well as the Russian Super Cup. In 2014 and 2016, he repeated his achievements, winning two more national championships. However, the 2016/17 season did not start very well for the coach, and already in December 2016 he voluntarily left the post. But it is worth paying attention to the fact that for some period of time he trained not only CSKA. Who else was Slutsky? Russian national team coach!
Coaching in the national team
In the summer of 2015, the Russian Football Union invited the current coach of CSKA to the position of head coach of the national team. Slutsky - coach of the Russian team! That was sensational news. He managed to achieve a lot with CSKA, so there were great expectations for the national team’s performances. The goal was a trip to the European Championship 2016, and Slutsky was able to lead the team there. The national team coach built the game well. However, at the tournament itself, everything went downhill. And this could not be controlled by Leonid Slutsky. The Russian coach made every effort to somehow make his players show at least some class, but all attempts ended in failure. The national team tied the first match with the British, which was a very good result, but this was followed by a defeat from the Slovak national team with a score of 1: 2. The match with Wales was decisive, and the Russians could catch on leaving the group if they won. But the result was the opposite - they lost, and devastatingly, with a score of 0: 3. As a result, the team scored only one point in three matches and flew out of the tournament, and Slutsky immediately resigned. As a result, he spent only 13 matches with the national team: 4 qualifiers for the European Championship, 6 friendlies in preparation for the tournament, as well as three directly at the 2016 European Championship itself. At the moment, Leonid Slutsky does not have a contract with any of the clubs.
Personal life
As for his personal life, Slutsky has a half-brother Dmitry. He also has a wife, Irina, with whom they had a son in 2008.